


The Gladdest Thing Under the Sun

by Eleutherios



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-08 15:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 56,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eleutherios/pseuds/Eleutherios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Violet Petunia Potter is left on the Dursleys' doorstep, Petunia Dursley cannot bring herself to continue hating her sister.  But growing up in the Dursley household, even one where not everyone openly hates you, comes with its own trials and tribulations.</p><p>A girl!Harry AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Chance to Make Amends

**Author's Note:**

> I have used dialogue verbatim from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in this chapter.

_“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!  
I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”_

The word one might use to describe Little Whinging, thought Petunia Dursley as she wrestled her screaming son into his high chair, was ordinary.  What kind of neighbourhood was it?  Oh – ordinary.  Was it wealthy or poor?  Neither, really – just ordinary.  And the people?  Oh, you know the sort, down-to-earth and well-to-do, but not so rich they were different – just ordinary.

She prattled cheerfully as she served her husband dinner, rambling on about whatever came to mind – Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter, Harriet Lovelace’s divorce, how Mr Young was renting out his house to the Balakrishnans.  It was a soothing ritual, talking about other people’s problems.  Privet Drive was ordinary.  Other people had problems; other people were talked about.  If you had problems – if you weren’t ordinary – you tried with all your might to pretend it wasn’t so.  Petunia would go to her grave swearing she had never laid eyes on the woman Lily Potter.  You were normal, you were ordinary, you were respectable, whatever the cost.

She absent-mindedly wiped a bit of drool off Dudley’s chin as she fed him another spoonful of noodles with cheese.  Her baby, her precious little treasure.  She loved him to bursting.  The one thing that was extraordinary in her normal, respectable world.  She would never say it, but Dudley was the one thing she had in her life that measured up to what she’d dreamed of as a girl.  It wasn’t that she didn’t love her husband.  She did, truly and deeply, but when she was a girl, she’d dreamed that there’d be... fireworks.  But there were many kinds of love, and when the passionate kind had burned cold, she thanked Heaven for men like Vernon Dursley, solid, dependable men, for whom words like passion and magic were in a foreign language.  Vernon Dursley did not hold with foreigners.

After dinner, she put Dudley to bed and made tea as her husband watched the news.  Tea was a soothing ritual; if you did everything just so, you’d have a perfect cup of tea.  Just follow the instructions and everything will be alright.  A pity life wasn’t the same.

‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ asked Vernon, rather nervously, she thought.

‘No,’ she said sharply, astonished and affronted.  The Potters were never mentioned under the Dursley household’s roof.  ‘Why?’

‘Funny stuff on the news.  Owls... shooting stars... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in town today...’

‘So?’ snapped Petunia.

‘Well, I just thought... maybe... it was something to do with... you know... _her_ lot.’

Petunia’s hand trembled as she sipped her tea; she set her cup down a little harder than she’d meant to, and some of the tea slopped over into the saucer.  Vernon was usually just as determined as she was to pretend _that lot_ didn’t exist.  Why was he bringing them up now?

‘Their daughter – she’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t she?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Petunia coldly.  Was he going to tell her he’d seen them?  Or worse, that he’d gone to see them?  What if he wanted to affect some sort of reconciliation?  Petunia would rather have died than said so, but one of the reasons she would never see her sister again was that she knew that her behaviour toward Lily had been very wrong.  Seeing Lily again would force her to admit it.

‘What’s her name again?  Vivian, isn’t it?’

‘Violet.  Silly, pretentious name, if you ask me.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Vernon, looking faintly ill for some reason.  ‘Yes, I quite agree.’

He didn’t mention it again as they went to bed.  Petunia tried to comfort herself in the night-time ritual she performed each evening before bed; cleanse, exfoliate, tone, moisturise.  It was no use.  The mention of her sister and that hateful other world from the lips of her staunchly normal husband seemed to have breached some veil that separated her perfect, normal life from the insanity of the world her sister inhabited and she couldn’t stop it up.  She could go days, weeks at a time without thinking of her sister, but like tonight, something would always bring back memories of Lily, like a bottle of scent that everyone thought had dried up years ago but now unstoppered would pour its contents out to contaminate everything.

She concentrated on tidying up the bathroom with a kind of restrained aggression.  Cleanliness was normal.  Cleanliness meant control.

She fell asleep quickly that night.  She had a strange dream.  In it, she was walking through a field of tall white lilies, the grass cool and dewy beneath her bare feet.  The sky overhead was dark, the waning crescent of a moon a pale sliver of light.  Low over the horizon hung a single red star, and in the distance something was burning.  She could see the plume of smoke, lit from below by the fires.  It coiled up into the sky, coalescing into a silvery snake that reared up and hissed at her.

Petunia woke with a start to the sound of Vernon’s snoring.  She lay there for a moment and realised that her cheek was wet with tears.  She wiped them away impatiently; by the time she was downstairs, she’d forgotten all about the dream.  She generally got up early to make breakfast for Vernon and get started on the housework.  No matter how much she did, there was always more to do.  Always something to clean, and Dudley never wanted for attention.

Opening the front door to put out the milk bottles, she almost tripped over something on the doorstep.  She looked down and shrieked, a shrill cry of pure terror that went on and on until Vernon rushed downstairs to catch her as she fainted.

An hour later, she was lying on the sofa with a damp cloth on her forehead, rereading the letter that had been tucked into the baby’s blankets.

_Dear Petunia,_

_My name is Albus Dumbledore.  You wrote to me once when you were a girl, as I recall, asking me to permit you to come to Hogwarts School.  I was very glad of your eagerness; many non-magical folk are not so understanding, and it pleased me to think that your sister had a home where her gifts were appreciated._

_It is of your sister that I write today.  Mrs Dursley, I am very sorry to inform you that the day before yesterday, your sister Lily and her husband James were killed at the hands of the Dark wizard Voldemort.  I am very sorry for your loss. Please accept my condolences and know that your sister and her husband died bravely, protecting their daughter. They will be remembered by many people as heroes and martyrs, as I am sure you will remember them as beloved family._

_This child is their daughter.  As long as she lives with you, as long as she resides under the roof of her mother’s blood, she will be safe.  This child will have enemies, Petunia.  She will face hardships and dangers.  Look after her.  Treat her as your own.  Keep her safe, keep her happy.  Her name is Violet Petunia Potter. I promise you, Petunia, that your house and your family will have all the protection you need until she is of age. You are all this child has now._

_Your servant,_

_Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore  
Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards_

Only three words had sunk in.  Violet Petunia Potter.

Violet.  Petunia.  Potter.

 _Lily named her daughter after you_ , said an accusing voice in the back of her brain.  _Your sister loved you and forgave you for the way you treated her and named her firstborn child after you and you rebuffed her for all these years and now she is dead._

Petunia felt a hollow roaring in her insides.  What was Lily Potter to her?  A stranger.  They hadn’t spoken in years, and somehow that hurt worse.  Her own sister was dead and she could not muster up more than a faint regret.  She had failed, and Lily had named her child after Petunia.  Violet Petunia Potter...

Petunia gazed at the baby with its tuft of fluffy black hair.

 _Here_ , said the little voice, _is a chance to make amends.  Violet Petunia Potter._


	2. The Potter Girl

“ _Come away, O human child!_  
 _To the waters and the wild_  
 _With a faery, hand in hand._  
 _For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”_

Violet Potter had been imprisoned for theft.  Not bad for a ten-year-old girl.  They’d caught her shoplifting, a ten-pack of batteries and a packet of barley sugar stuffed inside her jacket.  It was quite a big jacket – it had once been Dudley’s, so Violet was quite certain that if she wasn’t careful putting it on she might vanish into it and never be seen again – and perfect for hiding things.  She’d been careless, though, and gotten caught by a security guard and she’d been confined to the store’s office while the manager called the Dursleys.  Silly of him to leave her in here alone.  She’d already filched five pounds and a deck of playing cards out of his desk.

The man unlocked the door and came back in.  ‘Your aunt’s coming to get you, sweetheart,’ he said.  ‘Look, you mustn’t go around nicking things.  I’m sure you’re a good kid.  Think of how your aunt felt when I called her.’  His round, soft eyes looked troubled, and he twiddled his fingers nervously.

Violet didn’t say anything.  People didn’t really want to hear what was wrong; they never really listened.  She supposed it must be her fault in some way – how was she supposed to explain it to people, the balancing act that was life with the Dursleys?  Whenever she tried to talk about it, it all sounded wrong, feeble somehow, a jumbled mess of strict uncles and chores that led her teachers to send home notes saying she had behavioural problems.

She supposed she ought to be glad that she’d tried this on a Friday on the way home from school.  Uncle Vernon wouldn’t be home yet, and it was always better to deal with Aunt Petunia.  Aunt Petunia was the one you wanted catching you, if you had to get caught – she would haul you, tight-lipped, to the cupboard and shut you in without meals, but that meant that Uncle Vernon couldn’t get at you, and she would always make sure there was something in the fridge that didn’t need reheating after the house was asleep.  Violet often heard Uncle Vernon’s bellowing from her cupboard; Aunt Petunia always told him what had happened, but only after she’d locked Violet in the cupboard.  It protected her.  Uncle Vernon was an angry man, and if he could shout and bellow and rant and rave, it would be over and done with, his anger spent.  But getting caught by Uncle Vernon meant being a convenient outlet for his rage: it meant being slapped dizzy; it meant being dragged to the cupboard by her hair; it meant Aunt Petunia standing silently by until her husband left the room.  Sometimes Aunt Petunia could calm him down; she would piercingly whisper that people would wonder at the bruises, or scold him and tell him to keep his voice down in case the neighbours heard and wondered.  Sometimes she couldn’t.

Accident-prone.  That was what the Dursleys told everyone about their delinquent niece, the Potter girl.  Walking into doors.  Stepping on rakes.  Falling down the stairs.  Sometimes, even Violet forgot what really happened.

‘You gonna say why a little girl needs batteries so badly?  The barley sugar I can understand, but batteries, sweetie?’

Violet didn’t answer, and the manager sighed and seemed about to say something when one of the shop assistants poked her head in to ask a question, and he was obliged to go out again.

Eventually, Aunt Petunia showed up.  She was talking to the manager just outside the door; Violet heard her terse, nasal voice, indistinct but unmistakeable.  Finally, the door flew open and Aunt Petunia marched in and hauled Violet out by the arm.  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said tightly to the manager.  ‘Violet, apologise to Mr Farrow.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Farrow,’ said Violet obediently.

‘That’s alright, love,’ said Mr Farrow, his broad, comfortable face troubled.  ‘Don’t be too hard on her.  I’m sure she’s a good girl.’

Aunt Petunia didn’t speak the whole way home, white-faced and tight-lipped.  Violet walked ahead of her, studiously avoiding the cracks in the pavement.  It was a very awkward four blocks to Privet Drive, and only when they were in the house did Aunt Petunia speak.  Violet could hear Dudley upstairs, probably playing computer games.

‘Go to your cupboard,’ she said, tense.  ‘You’re to stay there without dinner.’  That usually meant that Aunt Petunia would unlock the cupboard door before going to bed, which meant being able to raid the fridge.

Violet often thought Aunt Petunia was a bit strange.  She followed her husband in everything, except where Violet was concerned.  They never disagreed about it as far as Violet knew, but Aunt Petunia’s long, gentle hands were always the ones that disinfected the scratches and cuts and applied ice packs and sticking plasters.  Aunt Petunia always made sure Violet had enough to eat, and although she gave her son his way in everything, she would be the first to scold him when he bullied Violet.  Oddly enough, this was one matter in which she and Uncle Vernon were in agreement; hitting girls, said Uncle Vernon, wasn’t respectable.  Except, apparently, when he did it.

Violet shut herself in the cupboard and heard Aunt Petunia shut the latch.  She waited until she heard pots and pans in the kitchen before pulling a ten-pack of batteries and a packet of jersey caramels from where they were tucked into the waistband of her pants.  Violet had learned some time ago that if you were caught stealing and you gave them back the things they could see, they’d usually stop looking and you could smuggle something else out.  She was grateful for Dudley’s hand-me-down pants; they were about three times too big for her, but that made them useful for stealing things.  She carefully opened the packet of caramels, changed the failing batteries in the torch she’d stolen from the garage, and began reading.  She had a stack of books under her bed; some were from the library at school, but others were books she’d stolen from second hand bookstores or other libraries.  Her favourite was _A Little Princess_ , the story of the regal Princess Sara whose money was taken away, who was made a servant and wickedly ill-treated, and yet she always remained wise and strong and gentle, generous to those who had less than her even though she had precious little to spare, and courteous even to those who were insolent and cruel.  When Violet had read it for the first time, she’d cried and cried, because after ages of trying to tell people what was happening, this woman she’d never met from a hundred years ago had written this story and she’d known for the first time that she wasn’t the only one who felt this way.  Violet had borrowed the book from the library for four weeks in a row, copying it into five school exercise books which she kept under her pillow.

She was reading _The Arabian Nights_ when Uncle Vernon came home.  Violet quickly turned off the torch and held her breath.  She counted to one hundred before the explosion came.

‘I’LL KILL HER!’

‘Vernon, don’t – ‘

Violet jumped as Uncle Vernon hammered on the cupboard door, making the whole thing shake.  A spider fell from the ceiling onto her bed and she brushed it off.

‘HOW DARE YOU?!  I’VE HAD IT WITH YOU, GIRL!  ALL THESE YEARS WE’VE FED YOU, CLOTHED YOU – ‘

‘Kept a roof over your head,’ recited Violet under her breath.

‘ – AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY US?!  I’VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH YOU!  EMBARRASS US LIKE THIS AGAIN AND YOU’LL BE OUT IN THE STREET!’

Violet smoothed down the bedspread in the dark, trying to keep her hands from trembling.  She heard Uncle Vernon’s feet pounding away as he shouted at Aunt Petunia, not because he was angry with her, but because he always liked an audience when he was ranting about his niece.

She sat in the dark, too frightened to turn the light back on, curled up in bed and clutching the tattered paperback in her arms as if it brought her comfort.  She must have fallen asleep, because she was woken by the bolt on the outside of the cupboard being unlatched, and Aunt Petunia’s soft footsteps going upstairs to bed.  Violet had learned, in her long hours sitting in the darkness, to tell the different members of the Dursley family apart by the way they walked.  Dudley was thunderous and irregular.  Uncle Vernon’s was a steady stomping.  Aunt Petunia’s was light and quick, like she was afraid to stand still for too long.

She counted until three hundred to make certain the Dursleys were in bed before slipping out into the kitchen and helping herself to some of the pasta in the fridge.


	3. Violet's Day Out

_“So maybe now this prayer’s_  
 _The last one of its kind:_  
 _Won’t you please come get your baby,_  
 _Maybe?”_

‘Violet?  It’s time to get up.  Come help me with breakfast.’

Violet woke to the sound of Aunt Petunia tapping at her front door.  She blinked at the dark for a moment, then sat up, rubbing her eyes.

‘Come on, Violet.’

Aunt Petunia was never exactly unkind, but she wasn’t overflowing with affection, either.  She cared, but she was never gentle or tender.  She made sure Violet had good meals and did her homework and stopped Uncle Vernon from hitting her too hard, but there were never hugs or kisses or kind words.

She got dressed and stumbled into the kitchen.  The living room, she noticed, was full of brightly-wrapped presents.  She perked up a little; she’d forgotten that today was Dudley’s birthday.  Every year on her cousin’s birthday, his parents took him out shopping, or to the cinema, or the zoo, while Violet was left with Mrs Figg.  Mrs Figg had cats, and Violet loved cats.  She also had books that the Dursleys were sure to disapprove of, books with titles likes _Bulfinch’s Mythology_ and _The White Goddess_ that were always very interesting.

‘Violet, see to the bacon,’ said Aunt Petunia.  ‘Then make some more tea while I do the eggs.’

‘Yes, Aunt Petunia.’

Uncle Vernon was sitting at the kitchen table, his big meaty hands the only bits of him visible around his paper.  ‘Bring my coffee, girl.’

Violet, about to put some more bacon in the pan, looked to her aunt for instruction.  Aunt Petunia flapped her hands at the coffee pot, so Violet put the bacon down and went to pour Uncle Vernon more coffee.

‘Brush your hair,’ grunted Uncle Vernon.  Violet pushed her hair out of her face.  There was quite a lot of it, all black and wavy and halfway down her back.  Aunt Petunia didn’t like to see girls with short hair, but Violet’s simply grew all over the place, an unruly mane that defied brushing and water.  Violet had once cut it off herself when she was seven, which had earned her a week in her cupboard.  She had a photograph of her parents hidden in a shoebox under her bed; Aunt Petunia had given it to her in a shiny golden frame as a Christmas present one year.  It had been taken at their wedding; her dad’s hair was wild and stuck up every which way, like hers did when it was short.  Aunt Petunia sometimes said that Violet looked more like her mother, though.  Violet couldn’t see it.  Her mum had been a slim, beautiful woman, with a lovely pale Madonna face, shining red locks and enormous green eyes.  Violet was tall for her age with a jagged scar on her forehead, a skinny white wildcat who climbed trees to get away from bullies and bit them when they caught her.  She had green eyes, like her mother, though.

Dudley came downstairs half an hour later as Violet was tucking into breakfast.  He ignored the food and headed straight for the presents, which he began counting.  Violet began wolfing down bacon while Dudley was distracted.  He always ate anything she really wanted, even if it made him sick.  It was part of his charm.  Violet had learned to eat quickly and eat a lot whenever she had the opportunity.

Dudley was having a sulk about not getting enough presents, and as Aunt Petunia was appeasing him, the phone rang.  She hurried to pick it up as Violet finished her breakfast and began collecting the plates.

‘Bad news, Vernon,’ said Aunt Petunia as Violet washed up.  ‘Mrs Figg’s broken her leg.  She can’t take Violet for the day.’

Violet’s heart plummeted, and then she felt guilty that her first reaction was disappointment rather than sympathy for poor old Mrs Figg.  Then she perked up again, because although she would miss out on seeing the cats, the Dursleys might leave her in the house by herself.  She could eat what she wanted, and watch television, and make as much noise as she liked.  Maybe she could even try her hand at some of Dudley’s computer games.

‘We could call Marge.’

‘Don’t be silly, Vernon, Marge hates her.’

‘You could just leave me here,’ said Violet hopefully.

‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ said Aunt Petunia stiffly.

Violet fell silent; there was no use in arguing.  Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia debated in whispers for a few moments before Violet had another bright idea.  ‘Why don’t you just leave me at the library for the day?’ she asked.  ‘I won’t be any trouble.’

The Dursleys exchanged a look.  ‘It’ll keep her out of the way,’ said Uncle Vernon.

‘The shops are nearby, she can get her own lunch,’ said Aunt Petunia thoughtfully.  ‘Dudders, darling, would you mind terribly if we dropped your cousin off at the library before going into London?’

‘She’s not going to come with us?’ said Dudley suspiciously, piggish eyes screwed up with dislike.  Violet stuck her tongue out at him from behind his parents’ backs.

‘No, darling, we’re going to leave her there for the day.’

‘Alright then.’

Just then the doorbell rang, and Aunt Petunia went to answer it as Violet finished washing up.  Piers Polkiss came in, a hatchet-faced boy who held smaller kids while Dudley punched them.  Violet hated him.  He’d once stuck gum in her hair, and he was always the first one to steal her pencil case or her bag and start the game of keeping them away from her.

After breakfast, they all piled into the car, Violet squeezed between the two boys.  It was a short drive to the library, and Aunt Petunia saw her off with two pounds for her lunch.  Violet got out of the car with a spring in her step, even waving goodbye to the Dursleys as they drove away.

The library in Little Whinging was a nice place.  Most kids didn’t like spending their weekends there, so it was always quiet, with mostly older university students studying or people like Violet who would much rather curl up with a book.  She went straight for the children’s section and found _The Secret Garden_.  She’d never read it, but it was in the back of _A Little Princess_ as being “From the same author”, so she’d been meaning to for ages.  She hadn’t brought her library card (although strictly speaking it was Uncle Vernon’s library card; she’d stolen it out of his wallet when she was seven and he hadn’t noticed) so she couldn’t borrow it, but she sat in one of the squashy armchairs and read until she got hungry.  It was lovely, not as good as _A Little Princess_ , but she sat there for hours, enthralled by the magic of Frances Hodgson-Burnett’s words.

She left the library with _The Secret Garden_ and another book called _Truckers_ stuffed inside her overlarge jacket.  She bought fish and chips and ate them in the park, occasionally throwing a chip to the pigeons.  When she was done, she sat on a bench outside the library and read until she finished _The Secret Garden_ , and began on _Truckers_.

Eventually, it began to get too dark to read, and there was no car coming to pick her up.  Violet went inside the library to wait and dropped _The Secret Garden_ into the returns chute, waiting in one of the armchairs inside.  Surely the Dursleys should have been back by now?  They wouldn’t leave her here, would they?  She wasn’t sure she could remember the way back to Privet Drive.

When one of the librarians came along to kindly tell her that the library was closing and she had to go home, Violet stood outside, shivering slightly in the evening chill as the streetlights came on, struggling not to cry.


	4. Birthday Cake

“ _How terrible art thou in thy works! through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee._ ”

Violet didn’t know how long she’d been walking.  Her feet had been sore, but now there was a sort of tight numbness that went all up her legs, so she sat down on a bench underneath a streetlight to rest.

It was very late.  There were no cars in the streets, and it felt like she’d been walking for days.  She didn’t have a watch, but she knew it couldn’t be later than nine or ten.  She was carrying her jacket in her arms with _Truckers_ wrapped up in it; it had gotten quite warm after half an hour or so of walking.

Little Whinging was the kind of town where everyone stayed in at night.  Violet had seen only two people since leaving the library, and had hidden until they were gone each time with all of Dudley’s stories of crazed murderers kidnapping kids coming back in skin-crawling terror.  She was trying to think of something she might have read that would help.  She knew that Polaris showed the way north, but she had no idea which star that might be.  However, she knew that the park behind the library was called the East Green, and the lawn in front of it with the statue of the Duke of Wellington was the West Green, so she’d decided that those must be east and west.  She knew that they had to travel north to get to the library from Privet Drive because the sun had been on the right this morning.  So she was travelling south.

Violet kept to the main streets, staying as much under the streetlights as she could.  It wasn’t that she was scared of the dark; she slept in a cupboard under the stairs.  It was simply that this darkness was different, huge and full of noises, of distant dogs and rustling in the bushes.  Fear pricked at her insides, slow and cold.

Eventually, Violet began to get cold again, so she put her jacket back on and kept walking.  It never occurred to her to knock at the doors of one of the houses and ask for help or directions.  Grown-ups were never helpful.

Violet walked for a long time, but there was only so much a ten-year-old girl – even a scrappy ten-year-old girl with precocious criminal cunning – could endure.  Worn out beyond bearing, Violet sat down on the pavement and began to cry.

She sobbed for a long time, and when she was done she felt a kind of peace settle over her.  Violet didn’t often cry.  Crying in the Dursley household had meant being slapped and locked in her cupboard.  Huddled against someone’s fence, she sniffled, wiped her eyes, and looked around to see if she could find anything that might tell her where she was.  She was on the corner of Rose Street and Wisteria Walk.

Violet sat bolt upright.  All the streets near Privet Drive had the names of plants.  She knew what roses were, of course, Aunt Petunia had lots of them, and wisterias were the dangling flowers, and privets, she’d learned from one of Aunt Petunia’s gardening books, were a kind of shrub.  She tottered unsteadily to her feet and hurried down Wisteria Walk until she found the alley that led to Magnolia Crescent.  She was running now, the ache in her legs forgotten, and it was only two streets over to Privet Drive.

It looked like all the lights in number four were on.  Sounds of music and laughter came floating out to her.  Dudley’s birthday party.  All his friends must have arrived for dinner.

Violet stood at the front gate, her hands clenched so hard around the wrought iron that when she looked down, she realised it had cut into her palms.  Trembling, she unlatched the gate and walked up to the front door, pressing the doorbell.

She heard Aunt Petunia’s voice, warm and laughing, such as she’d never used with Violet.  ‘That must be another of your friends, darling, just in time for – ‘

The door opened and Aunt Petunia stood there, tall and slender in a pretty party dress, her rare and lovely smile already fading as her face fell.  For a single moment, Petunia looked just like Lily, in the only picture of her that Violet possessed, and her face, passing from the happiness of her son’s birthday party to sudden confused dismay, was something Violet would always remember.

‘Violet,’ she said, sounding almost frightened.

Violet stepped past her aunt, taking off her coat.  She wasn’t sure what to say.  As she went to hang it up in her cupboard, something came flying out of the living room and hit her on the head.  She reached up to wipe it off.  It was a piece of icing.

She turned to look at Dudley and maybe a dozen of his friends gathered around the living room coffee table with plates of cake, smirking at her.  She’d never been allowed to go to any of Dudley’s birthday parties.  Aunt Petunia always arranged for her to go to Mrs Figg’s house.  She’d never tasted a birthday cake before.

She’d been so scared.  She felt like she’d walked a hundred miles.  And they were eating cake and laughing at her and Dudley was sitting amid piles of presents and he'd thrown icing at her.

When Violet tried to describe it afterwards, she could only say that it felt like she’d thrown something, expecting to miss, like a carelessly tossed pebble that somehow found its mark and cut or bruised –

THUMP.  Every slice of cake in the room exploded inward, right into the face of the boy holding the plate, with enough force that Dudley’s nose began bleeding.  At almost exactly the same time, five bottles of Coke burst, the caps punching straight through the ceiling and the bottles spraying fountains of soft drink into the air.

Aunt Petunia stood in the doorway of the living room, her hands over her mouth, her face gone white with shock.  Uncle Vernon had bits of cake in his moustache, and he’d also gone very pale.  Dudley started crying.

Violet went to her cupboard and shut herself in.  She lay in the dark for a long time listening to the sounds of her aunt and uncle panicking, cleaning and calling people’s parents before she fell asleep.


	5. Sỳn Athēnâi Kaì Kheîra Kinei

“ _Who will buy this wonderful morning?_  
 _Such a sky you never did see!_  
 _Who will tie it up with a ribbon_  
 _And put it in a box for me_  
 _So I could see it at my leisure_  
 _Whenever things go wrong?_  
 _And I would keep it as a treasure_  
 _To last my whole life long._ ”

Over the next few weeks, Violet left her cupboard only to eat and go to school.  The Dursleys didn’t try anything; Uncle Vernon and Dudley seemed determined to pretend that Violet didn’t exist, and even Dudley’s gang avoided her after the birthday cake incident.  Aunt Petunia alternated between silent panic and a sort of stilted attempt to be motherly.  She called Violet “dear” and brought her tea.  She left dinner-trays outside of Violet’s cupboard, which Violet didn’t touch until she was certain everyone was in bed.  It was horribly awkward, and Violet couldn’t look at her aunt without remembering the expression on her face – how happy she’d looked, coming from Dudley’s birthday party, and how it had suddenly turned to dismay at seeing her niece.

Before the incident with the birthday cake, Violet would have given anything to be treated like this, but she got no joy from seeing her aunt tiptoe around in fright for fear of exploding baked goods.  Uncle Vernon and Dudley were an improvement; being ignored was better than any treatment she ever got from the pair of them.  But Aunt Petunia, who’d always been sort of nice for reasons Violet could never understand but appreciated, was now being nice because she was frightened.  Violet couldn’t bear to look at her.

By the time she spoke to any of the Dursleys again, it was well into the summer holidays.  Violet woke up very early and lay in until it was nearly noon.  The Dursleys hadn’t made her do any chores since Dudley’s birthday.  It was strange to have so much time to herself.  She woke up early out of habit, but didn’t get out of bed because there was no one rapping on the cupboard door or telling her to dig the flowerbeds.

Violet didn’t know what had happened with the cake.  Nothing like that had ever happened before.  This wasn’t like talking to snakes in the hedges behind the school or making all the flowers in the garden bloom at once.  This was... something else.  Violet had tried to make it happen again, tried to explode a scone Aunt Petunia had brought her.  It hadn’t worked.  It never did, not when she tried to do it on purpose.

Lying there in her cupboard, it occurred to Violet that it was her birthday.  Today, she was eleven years old.

The doorbell rang, and she heard Aunt Petunia go to answer it.  A few minutes later, the cupboard door was wrenched off its hinges, and Violet shrieked in shock as sunlight streamed in.

 

Minerva McGonagall did not consider herself a bad-tempered woman.  She wasn’t like Severus, who could turn wintry in an instant; nor was she like Poppy, eternally flustered and impatient.  But she’d made her visits to the families of Muggle-born students already, delivering their Hogwarts acceptance letters, and she didn’t see why she should have to go all the way to Surrey at the end of July to deliver a letter to a family that had already had contact with the wizarding world.

Admittedly, she was rather curious to see what had become of Violet Potter over the years.  Petunia Dursley had seemed like a ridiculously doting mother; Minerva rather dreaded finding out that the Girl Who Lived had become a spoiled princess.

She walked briskly up Privet Drive.  It had changed very little in the past ten years, but number four’s agapanthuses were flourishing.  She pressed the doorbell and waited.

Petunia Dursley answered it.  ‘I don’t buy things at the door and I don’t answer surveys,’ she said stiffly.  ‘Good morn – ‘

‘Mrs Dursley, I have come about your niece,’ said Minerva, putting out a hand to stop her from closing the door.  ‘May I come in?’

Petunia went pale and her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment.  ‘I – She went into town.’

‘Out on her birthday, no doubt?’ said Minerva, trying to put the woman at ease.  ‘I daresay that is very generous of you, Mrs Dursley.  But it is to you and your husband that I wished to speak.  Is he home?’

And with that, Minerva gently pushed the door open and stepped past Petunia.  ‘What a lovely house you have.’  Oppressively clean was more like it.  The whole place smelled very faintly of detergent, bleach and potpourri.

‘Please,’ said Petunia faintly, motioning that Minerva should follow her.  She was led into a pretty kitchen where a big, beefy man was reading a paper.

‘Who’s this?’ he grunted.

Minerva frowned.  ‘Mr Dursley, my name is Minerva McGonagall.  I am Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of – ‘ She jumped as Dursley slammed his hands down on the table.

‘Now you listen to me, woman!  We swore when we took her in that we’d put a stop to that rubbish!  Swore we’d stamp it out of her!  Sending her halfway across to the country to some mad hippie school, what would the neighbours think?  I am not paying for some – ‘

‘Mr Dursley!’ she shouted, drawing herself up to her full height and infusing her voice with all the dreadful authority of the classroom.  ‘If you think that the opinions of your neighbours are more important than the education of your niece, you ought not to be a parent!’  Well, no wonder there’d been no reply from Violet Potter’s guardians, with such people as these acting _in loco parentis_!  ‘Miss Potter’s name has been down for Hogwarts since the day she was born.  She will attend and grow into her power as her parents did before her!  I should like to see you try and keep the daughter of Lily and James Potter from Hogwarts!  You may find it a much more difficult enterprise than you suppose!’  Vernon had sunk so far back into his chair as she advanced on him that only his forehead was visible over the table.

Why was Petunia constantly glancing back toward the hall?  And why on Earth did she look so frightened?

Minerva was by no means an incompetent Legilimens, but she lacked the subtlety that led to true mastery of the art.  She could, however, glean images that were in the very forefront of a panicked mind and concerned her specifically.  Catching Petunia’s eye, Minerva realised that this woman did not want her to look in the cupboard under the stairs.

Her eyes widened.  Surely not...

Minerva McGonagall was not a bad-tempered woman.  But if she blasted the door of the cupboard clean off its hinges and sent it crashing down the hallway, no one could blame her.

The girl in the tiny space inside shrieked in fright, then sat up too quickly and hit her head on the stairs.  ‘Ow!  I didn’t do anything!’ she cried.

Minerva couldn’t speak.  The girl was sleeping on a narrow iron bedstead that took up nearly the entire space under the stairs.  Some bare pine shelves had been put up, on which were a number of dog-eared paperbacks and some neatly-folded clothes.  It was bare and mediaeval, and for the child of Lily and James Potter to be forced to live in such conditions... She felt her blood boiling, but forced her features into a smile.

‘Miss Violet Potter?’ she said gravely.

‘Yes?’ said the girl cautiously, squinting up at her.

‘I am Professor McGonagall.  Please join me in the kitchen.’

The girl was up in an instant, rubbing her eyes and dragging a brush through her wild mane of hair.  As she stepped into the light, Minerva realised that she looked astonishingly like Lily, but for the hair.  She had her father’s hair.

‘Would you like some tea, Miss Potter?’ she asked as the child sat down at the kitchen table in her faded, too-large pyjamas.

‘No, thank you, Professor,’ said Violet politely.  She was staring at her aunt and uncle, who seemed to have been frozen to the spot in alarm.

‘ _Accio teapot_ ,’ said Minerva.  ‘ _Accio tea_.’  She caught the china teapot and the canister of tea, and after shaking a decent amount of tea into the pot, stuck her wand inside it and said, ‘ _Aguamenti_.’  She placed the lid on top, tapped it with her wand, and poured herself a cup of fragrant, steaming tea.  Minerva always impressed on her students the importance of never using magic for selfish or trivial purposes, but had always considered tea to be a vital purpose of utmost moral gravity.

Violet had been watching all this with eyes the size of saucers.  ‘Could I learn to do that?’ she breathed.

‘If you put your mind to it,’ said Minerva.  ‘Now, Miss Potter.  I have come to talk to you and your guardians about your schooling.’

‘But I’m on holidays,’ protested Violet.

‘You won’t always be, thank Heavens.  No, in September, school starts again, and you have been offered a place at the school where I teach: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.’  Minerva produced the letter and handed it over.  Violet took it, fascinated.

‘You’re a witch?’ she said, her voice hushed.

‘You doubt it?’ returned Minerva with a small smile.

‘Well, you’re not green,’ explained Violet as she read.  Minerva had no idea what to make of that.

Vernon, it seemed, had found his voice.  ‘I won’t have it!’ he bellowed.  ‘Not in this house!  You think I’ll have a freak like that living under the same roof as my wife and son?  That’s what you are, the lot of you, freaks, just like her mother and her good-for-nothing husband – ‘

‘Vernon,’ said Petunia sharply.  Minerva sensed that he’d hit a nerve; his wife’s hands were clutching the table, white-knuckled.  ‘That’s enough.’

Minerva sipped her tea.  ‘Mr and Mrs Dursley.  I understand that Violet needs protection, and that is why she has been placed in your care.  But I would never have allowed Miss Potter to remain with you if I had known that you would treat her so.’  She pointed at the hallway, at the charred, twisted wreckage of the cupboard door.  ‘That is barbaric.  I expected better of Lily Potter’s sister.  If something had happened to you, Lily would have raised your son with love and care.  You have betrayed your sister and wickedly ill-treated her daughter.’

‘She ought to be grateful!’ Mr Dursley burst out.  ‘Any other family, she’d have been packed off to an orphanage!  All these years we’ve fed her, clothed her – ‘

‘Kept a roof over her head,’ recited Violet under her breath, not looking up from her letter.  Minerva struggled to keep her mouth from twitching.

‘ – and we’ve put up with her nonsense – she blew up our Dudders’ birthday cake!’

‘Magical children often show signs of talent,’ said Minerva serenely.  ‘Surely you remember from when your sister was a girl, Mrs Dursley.’

‘My mum was a witch?’ said Violet, looking up.

‘Yes,’ said Minerva, surprised.  ‘Did they not tell you?’

‘I’m not supposed to ask questions,’ muttered Violet sullenly.  ‘You knew?’  This last was directed toward the aunt.

Petunia nodded stiffly.  ‘I hoped... I hoped you weren’t the same.  When your letters came, I was so frightened.  My sister – your mother – got a letter just like that when she was eleven.  She went off to school – and she met that – that boy – and she died.  She died because she was magic.’

Violet said, very quietly, ‘You told me my parents died when someone broke into their house.’

 _She doesn’t know_ , Minerva realised with horror.  _She doesn’t know why she’s famous.  These people never told her._   She was going to hex Albus into next week!


	6. "Morgan le Fay was not married, but put to school in a nunnery, where she became a great mistress of magic."

“ _I'm practically perfect in every way._  
 _Practically perfect, so people say._  
 _Each virtue virtually knows no bounds!_  
 _Each trait is great and perfectly sound!_ ”

The first thing to do, of course, was to make certain the Muggles knew who was in charge.  Minerva was considering how this ought to be done when Violet put down her letter, stood up and said, ‘Would you like something to eat, Professor?’

‘I – No, thank you, dear.’

Violet went about making toast.  Minerva noted that although there was real butter in the fridge, the child used canola spread, and drank water from the tap rather than milk or fruit juice.

‘Are you sure you don’t want some jam on your toast?’ asked Minerva with a frown.

‘I’m not allowed jam,’ said Violet.  Vernon Dursley went even more puce and sank lower in his chair while Petunia simply stared at her hands, white-knuckled, clutching the table’s edge.

‘And why are you not allowed jam, Miss Potter?’

Violet opened her mouth, then froze, glancing at her aunt and uncle.  ‘Makes me hyperactive,’ she muttered sullenly.

‘Nonsense,’ declared Minerva.  There were a number of pretty jars of jams sitting in a dainty rack on the kitchen counter.  ‘Have some jam; I am sure it will not do you any harm.’

Violet hesitantly selected some strawberry jam, and then orange marmalade.

‘While you are eating your lunch, I would like to speak with your aunt and uncle in private.  _Now_.’  She stood and glared at Mr Dursley.  Petunia, Minerva sensed, was not as ill-natured as her beast of a husband, and if he obeyed, the wife would follow.  ‘Mr Dursley, I am not trifling with you.  I assure you that there are certain authorities who would be interested in knowing why your niece was sleeping in a _cupboard_.’

‘Dudley needed the other room,’ Violet broke in unexpectedly.  ‘I used to sleep in the room next to his, but when I was little I had to go sleep in the cupboard because he needed somewhere to put all his toys that he didn’t want to throw away.’  All this was said with helpful earnestness, but with in such a matter-of-fact detachment that Minerva wanted to roar.

‘I see,’ said Minerva.  ‘Mr Dursley.  You and your wife will step outside with me for a moment or you will not like what follows.’  She pointed her wand at him and he went cross-eyed staring at it.  ‘Go.  Violet, as soon as you are finished eating, I want you to go get dressed.’

Vernon lurched out of his chair and almost ran for the back door.  Petunia followed with a look of terror after Minerva narrowed her eyes.

Once they were standing under the back porch, Minerva silently cast a Muffling Charm to make sure they would not be overheard.  Then she did what she had been aching to do since seeing the cupboard where Violet slept.

‘You imbeciles!’ she snarled.  ‘You cruel, revolting creatures!  I have half a mind to turn you into dormice and set my cat on you!  Have you any idea how precious that child is?  How much she has lost?  What she means to thousands of men and women all over Britain?  No, you don’t, do you?  What did you call us?  Freaks?  I don’t suppose you ever take any kind of interest outside your own tiny lives, you gormless, insipid wretches!  And you!’  Here, she rounded on Petunia.  ‘I knew Lily Evans, my girl, and if someone had told me yesterday that her sister was such a heartless, shrewish harpy, I would have dismissed them as mad.  If your places were reversed, if you were dead and your son orphaned, Lily would have raised him as her own!  She would have shown him love and care and given him everything he needed to hold up his head in the world!  You forced your sister’s daughter – your niece, Petunia Dursley, who shares your blood! – into a broom cupboard!  You will be fortunate if I do not summon the authorities and have you both thrown into prison!’

‘I tried,’ whispered Petunia.  ‘I tried to help her, I did.  I just – She was like my sister!  She was like you!  Oh, I knew what it was like, all right, growing up with a _magical child_!’  She spat the phrase with such venom that a lesser woman than Minerva might have recoiled.  ‘I remember her attacking me with falling branches, making flowers do unnatural tricks!  But oh no, my parents wouldn’t hear of it – it was always Lily this and Lily that, and oh Petunia, why can’t you be more like your sister LILY!’  Her rant rose to a scream, her face and voice a mixture of spite, grief and something Minerva could not identify.  ‘And then she went and got herself blown up, and she came here – ‘ she stabbed a finger in the direction of the kitchen, ‘ – and I thought, maybe I can do better, maybe I can make amends.  But every time I look at her, it’s Lily staring back at me, so much better, so special, so perfect, when I’m the only one who sees her for what she is – a _freak_!’  She froze, Minerva’s wand an inch from her face.

‘Listen to me, woman.  The only reason I do not hex you and your lumpish boor of a husband into next Thursday is because Violet must remain with her closest family.  Do _not_ test me, Petunia.  I saw the latch on the wretched cupboard door.  There are authorities in your world who would take a dim view of her treatment at your hands!’

‘I never – Vernon, no!’ shrieked Petunia.

Not for nothing was Minerva one of the finest duellists of the century.  She’d seen Vernon’s hands clenching and unclenching as she’d scolded him.  Here was a man who did not have a lot of room in his head for thoughts, whose fists did his thinking for him.  And when his head ran out of space, his fists took over.  She’d been keeping an eye on him ever since they’d stepped outside, and as he swung a fist at her, she ducked and shouted, ‘ _Stupefy!_ ’

He was knocked back against the house and fell flat on his face.  Petunia screamed and ran to him.  ‘Oh God!  What’ve you done to him?!  You’ve killed him!  You killed my husband!’

‘He’s just Stunned,’ snapped Minerva.  ‘Listen to me, Petunia Dursley.  You have committed serious offences against that girl sitting in your kitchen.  When your husband wakes, you will make it clear to him that you will no longer tolerate the abuse of your niece.’

‘But – but I can’t – ‘

‘Do you think I am the only person who has an interest in Violet Potter’s welfare?’ said Minerva icily.  ‘I am not certain of your laws, but I imagine that your police take a very dim view of the abuse of children.  You and your husband could pay a much greater price than treating the poor girl decently, and there are many who would make certain you paid it.’

Petunia, trembling, whispered, ‘My husband... He’ll – ’

‘Your husband deserves what he would get and more,’ said Minerva.  ‘Petunia, your sister is _dead_.  Perhaps it is time to let go of whatever mad grudge you had against her and our world and do right by her daughter.  How much do you know about her death, Petunia?  Did you know that Lily was murdered because she was like you?’

That got her attention.  ‘The – the letter said she was murdered by a – a dark wizard.’  Her voice dropped to a whisper on the last two words, and Minerva wondered if it was fear of Dark magic or an aversion to the word “wizard”.

‘She was murdered because she was like you.  There exists a group in our society who thinks that our worlds should remain completely separate.  That magical folk should associate solely with magical folk, and have nothing to do with your society.  You approve, no doubt.  There exists in this group a smaller minority that believes that magical folk should rule non-magical folk, that because we have magic, we are greater, wiser, and have the right to order the world as we see fit and destroy any who bar our way.  Your sister was born to non-magical parents, and these people saw her as impure, unworthy, a usurper of magic.  She and her husband fought them, alongside many brave men and women.  And that is why they were killed.  Because they believed that your world is not inferior, not irrelevant, and that coming from it is not something shameful!  Think on that the next time you refer to her as a freak!’

Minerva left Petunia trying to shake her husband awake and swept back inside to find Violet clearing away the breakfast things.  There was a stack of empty jam jars next to her; it seemed she'd eaten the jam with a spoon.  The girl was dressed in jeans that looked too large for her, her belt wrapped three times around her waist.  Her shirt was so large it looked more like a smock, and her dark, heavy locks fell into her face, making her look like a Shetland pony.

‘Miss Potter,’ said Minerva.  ‘Leave the washing-up for your aunt and come sit down, dear.’  The girl obediently sat opposite her at the kitchen table.  ‘I’m very pleased to tell you that you are a witch.’

Violet thought about this for a moment, then said, ‘Is that why I can do things like make flowers open and blow up birthday cakes?’

‘Very likely,’ said Minerva, marvelling privately at how calmly the child was taking it. Minerva herself had needed to lie down after finding out from her mother that magic was real; but then, she supposed, Violet Potter had reason to want to escape her world.  ‘You are a witch, just like me and your mother.  Your father was a fine wizard.’  She hesitated, and honesty compelled her to add, ‘At least once he had grown up.’

‘Can you show me some more magic?’ said Violet eagerly.  Minerva obliged by Transfiguring one of the daisies in the vase on the table into a length of white ribbon.  With another flick of her wand, it flew at the girl’s head, neatly looping around, tying her hair back from her face, exposing for the first time the scar on her forehead – a lightning bolt, like a rune that had been traced with a scalpel.

‘Would you like to come to Hogwarts to learn magic?’ asked Minerva bluntly.  She had no patience for easing people into things.

Violet seemed to consider this for a moment, then looked down at the letter on the table.  ‘I’ll need a wand, won’t I?’

Minerva smiled.  ‘Well, Miss Potter, I know just the place to get one.’


	7. Diagon Alley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco's in this one.

  “ _Morning and evening  
_ _Maids heard the goblins cry:_  
 _'Come buy our orchard fruits,_  
 _Come buy, come buy...'_ ”

Violet felt oddly calm.  She was walking down Privet Drive next to a real live witch, and she was going to a school of magic to learn to be a witch as well.  She felt like she ought to be jumping up and down and dancing and singing and turning the Dursleys into bats, but all she felt was a sense of peaceful watchfulness.  It hadn’t quite sunk in yet.  This still felt like a dream, like she might wish for bags of diamonds and they would fall into her lap and she wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

‘Miss Potter,’ said Professor McGonagall as they walked, ‘you said that your aunt and uncle told you that your parents died when someone broke into their home?’

‘Yep,’ said Violet, skipping a little and shaking her head to test how well her brand new hair ribbon held.  It barely budged.  ‘My aunt also said that’s where I got this.’  She tapped the scar.

‘That is... not entirely true,’ said Professor McGonagall.  ‘There are some things we need to get done, and then we shall have a little talk.  This way, please.’  She put a hand on Violet’s shoulder and steered her into a shaded lane.  ‘Now, Miss Potter, please hold onto my hand very tightly.’

Violet reached up and grasped the old witch’s fingers.  She gasped as there was a sensation like being pressed from every direction, and then with a pop, they were standing in a narrow alleyway.  It was suddenly so noisy; the sound of traffic and people talking suddenly filled the air and made Violet’s head spin.  She’d never been out of Little Whinging before; the Dursleys always refused to sign her permission slips for school trips, so she’d never gone to the Kensington Gardens or the Royal London Zoo with her classmates.  Uncle Vernon had driven her to the hospital in Guildford once after a “nasty fall down the stairs”, but since she’d been out cold at the time she didn’t think it ought to count.  Little Whinging could be louder than this, certainly, but the noise was never so constant, so steady, a murmur of engines, tyres, voices and feet all blended together with the sounds of daily life: tinkling shop doors, ringing phones and blaring horns.

‘Where are we?’ asked Violet in a whisper, not letting go of Professor McGonagall’s hand.

‘London,’ said the professor, leading her out of the alley and onto a crowded street.  ‘Come on, Miss Potter.’

Violet trotted alongside her, still holding her hand.  They walked for a few minutes down Charing Cross Road before they came to a rather shabby-looking pub.  It wasn’t far, but it took longer than it might have because Violet kept trying to stop and look at books, prompting Professor McGonagall to gently tug her along.  The pub’s sign proclaimed it to be The Leaky Cauldron, and Violet noticed that the people passing by didn’t seem to notice it – they went straight past, looking at the second-hand book shops on either side without registering the pub in between.

Inside, it was dark and quiet.  A few patrons sat at the bar and some were scattered around the tables.

‘Professor!’ said the barman, very surprised.  ‘We’ve not seen you here for a good long while!  A drink for you and the lass?’

‘No, thank you Tom,’ said Professor McGonagall, tossing him a large golden coin that Violet didn’t recognise.  ‘But I should be back by six, and if you can have a Gillywater waiting for me you can keep the change.  Come along, dear.’

This last was said to Violet, who was watching a very old woman daintily eat slices of something dark and red and raw-looking.  Her teeth were very sharp and iron-grey and her eyes were red.  She grinned at Violet, who waved back as Professor McGonagall ushered her out through the back door and into a small courtyard containing a single dustbin.

‘Right, stand back,’ said Professor McGonagall, tapping the wall with her wand.

As Violet watched, the brick slid back and out of sight, followed by the ones around it, until there were dozens of bricks sliding backwards and tucking themselves away to the sides to form a red brick arch.

‘Welcome to Diagon Alley.’

Trembling, Violet walked forward onto the cobbled street beyond, narrow and winding and lined with shopfronts beyond description.  It was like a fairy market or something out of the Arabian Nights.  From every side there were wonders vying for attention – sweets of dazzling colour and bewildering scent, mysterious instruments that spun or chimed or emitted puffs of smoke, strange plants and herbs and parts of animals, great stacks of books in strange languages, mysterious creatures in cages or glass boxes, and over it all, the voices of people shopping, haggling, bartering, calling out to come see, come try, come browse, come buy.  Violet hardly knew where to look; she ended up revolving on the spot, her eyes so wide she was sure people could see the whites all around, trying to take in everything at once.  It was everything she had ever dreamed, every book she had ever hidden in during those lonely hours in her cupboard.  It was Neverland and Narnia and Lothlorien and Wonderland all at once.

‘Violet?’ said Professor McGonagall gently.

Violet looked up at her, her heart beginning to race.  ‘Oh, Professor!  It’s wonderful!’ she cried.

Professor McGonagall laughed, and Violet’s first thought was that it made her look rather pretty.  ‘It is, isn’t it?  Stay close now; I don’t want you to get lost.’

Violet maintained her grasp on the Professor’s hand as she led her down Diagon Alley, through the thronging crowd of shoppers, many of whom were in robes and cloaks and pointed hats, just like witches and wizards in storybooks.

‘Professor...’ said Violet hesitantly as something dreadful occurred to her.  ‘I haven’t any money.  I won’t be able to buy any of my school things.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that, dear,’ said Professor McGonagall.  ‘Our first stop is Gringotts Bank.  When your parents died, they left you their fortune, and it has been kept safe for you ever since.’

They walked slowly so Violet could look as she went.  There were shops selling beetles’ eyes by the scoop, and lollipops made of acid, and books of magic!  Magic books like Coriakin had in the Narnia stories!  Violet wondered if there were any spells that could only be cast by little girls.  They went by a pet shop and one that had broomsticks in the display window.  A red-faced man with a big nose waved to Professor McGonagall from the doorway of Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, and the sky overhead fluttered with owls.

Finally, they came to the end of the Alley, where a columned building of white stone rose above a sort of square containing a fountain in the shape of a number of ladies with not a lot of clothes on, frolicking in the water.  Several other narrow streets led off from the square in different directions; one had a sign outside it saying Knockturn Alley and had a Gothic iron gate across the entrance; another was labelled Frantic Alley and seemed to be all uniform stucco-fronted buildings; a third was Cashew Alley, full of cafes and restaurants.  As they went up the front steps to the enormous bronze main doors, Violet noticed a very small creature, wrinkled and watchful, standing by them.

‘That is a goblin, Miss Potter,’ said Professor McGonagall.  ‘Please stop staring.’

The goblin bowed as they approached and opened the doors.  They entered, and were faced with a second set of silver doors on which was engraved a strange rhyming verse:

‘ _Enter, stranger, but take heed  
Of what awaits the sin of greed..._ ’

‘A wise admonition, Miss Potter,’ said Professor McGonagall.  ‘And priceless wisdom, if only you would heed it.  Now don’t stare, be polite and don’t make noise.  Goblins are an orderly folk, and don’t like it when little girls make trouble.’

Inside, it was all parquet floors and gleaming columns, a vast Gothic hall with doors leading off from it on either side.  Two long benches ran along the hall’s length, and goblins sat at these, writing in ledgers, counting coins, or evaluating riches.  Violet watched one of them open a small casket of what looked like multicoloured fire; it turned out to be full of dozens of sparkling gems which he began selecting with great care and weighing on a scale.  They walked down to the far end of the hall, where a long bench seated a number of goblin tellers.

‘Good day, madam,’ said one of them, inclining his head slightly.  He was about four feet tall with a very large, balding head, long, spindly fingers, pointy ears, and a fearsomely clever face.  ‘May I help you?’

‘Miss Violet Potter wishes to make a withdrawal,’ said Professor McGonagall.

‘Have you her key, madam?’

Professor McGonagall held up a tiny golden key which the goblin examined closely.  ‘That seems to be in order.  Griphook will show you to the vault.’

Griphook was another goblin, who took them through one of the doors off to the side and down several flights of stairs.  They emerged into what looked like an underground train station, a long grey platform in an echoing cavern of rough, unhewn stone with rails running off into the darkness.  Before long, a rickety cart rattled along and Violet clambered into it with Professor McGonagall close behind.

‘Keep your arms inside the cart, now.’

‘Yes, Professor.’

The cart took off, through dank caverns and passageways lit by flaming torches.  They shot on spindly bridges over lakes so vast and still that Violet saw her own face staring back from the surface as she peered over the edge of the cart (‘Don’t _do_ that!’ shrieked Professor McGonagall, yanking her back in) and through caves filled with stalactites and stalagmites like teeth.  Violet threw her hands in the air and whooped with exhilaration; it was even better than the time Aunt Marge’s dog Ripper had chased her up a tree and she’d jumped and gone sailing clean over the house to settle gently on the front lawn.  Her hair streamed behind her, the hair ribbon keeping it all in place.  Professor McGonagall kept one hand on her hat to keep it from blowing away.

The cart rattled to a halt by another stone platform with a door in it and they all clambered out.  Griphook unlocked it with Violet’s key, and as it opened it gushed green vapour.

A dim, warm glow met Violet’s eyes, and as they adjusted, she saw great piles of coins in gold, silver and bronze, rising from the recessed floor to higher than Violet’s head.

‘Wow,’ she breathed.  ‘Was this my parents’?’

‘It is yours now, Miss Potter,’ said Professor McGonagall.  ‘The gold ones are called Galleons.  The silver ones are Sickles.  The bronze ones are Knuts.  There are seventeen Sickles to a Galleon, and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle.’

Violet walked down the steps leading into the vault.  She sat on the bottommost one and dipped her hands into a pile of coins.  Gold and silver ran through her fingers like water, bouncing and rolling and ringing metal on metal.  She was rich.  She could dive into the coins if she wanted, and roll around in them like people did in cartoons!

Professor McGonagall helped Violet scoop some into a bag and they piled back into the cart.  Violet kept dipping her hand into the leather satchel, enjoying the sensation of submerging her hand in cool coins.

As they went out into the lobby of the bank, they passed an enormous hairy man, even taller than Professor McGonagall, who was very tall.  She nodded to him as they went by, and he grunted, ‘Professor’.

‘Who was that?’ asked Violet, peering back at him.  ‘He’s huge!  Is he a giant?’

‘That was Rubeus Hagrid, the gamekeeper at Hogwarts,’ said Professor McGonagall as they left the bank.  ‘A good man, and he knows all about the plants and animals on the grounds.  Now, I’m going to take you to Madam Malkin’s to get your school uniform, and while you’re being fitted, I shall pick up your schoolbooks from Flourish and Blott’s.’

‘I need three sets of black work robes, a cloak and a hat,’ said Violet, fishing the letter out of her pocket.  ‘Maybe I could buy some other clothes too?’  This last was said in a tone of tentative hopefulness; all the other people on Diagon Alley wore robes of rich colours and strange design, and Violet felt rather out of place in her oversized t-shirt and jeans.

‘That would be a good idea,’ agreed Professor McGonagall, much to Violet’s relief.  ‘I shall speak with the proprietress about it.’

Madam Malkin’s was a beautiful shop lined with mirrors and filled with robes of every description, from beautiful Chinese robes embroidered with dragons and phoenixes to sturdy travelling robes that wore well and were mud-resistant and waterproof.

‘Oh, Professor McGonagall!’ said a squat, smiling witch, hurrying toward them.  ‘This young one’ll be for Hogwarts, then?’

‘Yes, the standard uniform and perhaps a winter wardrobe?’ said Professor McGonagall.  ‘Nothing too fancy, but serviceable and better than what she has now.’

Violet blushed at this, but Madam Malkin didn’t give her time to feel self-conscious; she was ushered over to a fitting area and measured.

‘I shall be back in about an hour,’ said Professor McGonagall.  ‘Violet, when you’re done, you’re to stay here, you understand?’

‘Yes, Professor,’ said Violet happily.  On impulse, she hugged Professor McGonagall around the middle.  She felt her stiffen in surprise for a moment, and then the professor stroked her hair gently.

‘Run along, dear,’ she said fondly, and she was gone in a swirl of robes.

Madam Malkin took Violet over to another part of the shop where she threw a black robe over Violet’s head and began pinning it to the right length.  Standing nearby on another footstool was a pale boy with lovely white-blond hair being fitted by a second witch.

‘Hello,’ said Violet cheerfully.  ‘Are you going to Hogwarts?’

‘Yes,’ said the boy, looking bored.  ‘Was that your mother who came in with you just now?’

‘No, that’s Professor McGonagall.  She’s helping me buy my school things.  My parents are dead.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the boy, although he didn’t really sound it.  ‘My father’s next door buying my books and my mother’s up the street looking at wands.  Then I’m going to drag them off to look at racing brooms.  I don’t see why first years can’t have their own.  I think I’ll bully my father into getting me one and I’ll smuggle it in somehow.’

Violet laughed.  ‘You aren’t even there yet and you’re planning to break the rules?  That’s very brave of you.’  This boy was strange, but amusing.  He reminded Violet of a figure of speech she'd read in a book once - his nose was so high in the air, his feet didn't touch the ground.

‘Oh, I’m not worried.  Father’s on the school board.  I’d never get in any really bad trouble.  What’s your name?’

‘I’m Violet Potter.  It’s nice to meet you.’

‘Violet Potter?’ he exclaimed.  ‘Really?  Wow!’

‘Er – thank you?’ said Violet uncertainly.

‘I’m Draco Malfoy,’ said the boy.  ‘My father’s Lucius Malfoy, and my mother’s Narcissa Malfoy.’  He said this like Violet ought to be impressed, so she tried to look suitably awed.  ‘Is Professor McGonagall a teacher at Hogwarts?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know what she teaches.  She kind of reminds me of my science teacher from my old school...’

‘Mm,’ said Draco.  He didn’t sound very interested.  ‘Do you think she’ll mark you more easily because you already know her?’

Violet tried to imagine the slightly intimidating Professor McGonagall going easy on anyone, and immediately said, ‘No, definitely not.’  She was going to add that the professor was actually really nice when the robe was whipped up over her head and taken away to be hemmed and altered.

‘Alright, dear, if you’ll come over to the street clothes and daywear section, we’ll get you fitted out for a nice new wardrobe,’ said Madam Malkin cheerfully.

Violet hopped off the footstool.  ‘Bye, Draco.  Maybe I’ll see you at Hogwarts!’

‘Bye,’ said Draco, already looking bored again.

Violet was fitted for stockings, underthings, petticoats and frocks.  They were the loveliest clothes she’d ever worn; stockings of silk and petticoats of lace and dainty shoes of shiny black leather or what looked like red glass but were as comfortable as the fuzziest slippers.  She tried on dresses that were all over wretched bows and frills, silk dresses with crinolines wider than she was tall, dresses so puffy she had trouble walking, and dresses that came down almost to the floor so that she tripped over them.  She had enormous fun putting them on and prancing about in front of a mirror, though, and all the attendants were taken by the darling little girl who apparently had money to spare, and the pile of rejected garments grew larger and larger.  Violet noticed that they were all rather old-fashioned clothes, things with buttons up the back or aprons put to them and the like, and she supposed that if all the grown-ups went around in robes, it wasn’t surprising that the kids went around dressed like something out of an old picture-book.  Finally, they settled on a lovely green velvet frock with a muslin collar and a silk sash, a simple dress of blue wool with a design of little silver stars on it that glowed in the dark, a set of sturdy cotton day robes in deep red that were lighter and shorter and good for running around and climbing trees because they had a slit up each side and came with a pair of sturdy leggings that she could wear underneath and a nice, simple homespun dress in summery yellow, sewn with flowers.  Violet had never felt so pretty in her life.  She’d often been teased at school for her wild hair, her cast-off clothes, for being the tallest in her class, for never having anything new or anything that fit or anything of her own, and as she admired herself in the mirror in her new blue dress and silk stockings and little shiny black shoes with pearls on the clasps, twirling so that the skirts and petticoats flared out, she felt like the loveliest, luckiest girl in the world.

‘Would the young miss like to wear that one?’ asked one of the attendants, smiling.

‘Yes, I would,’ said Violet happily.  The green and red and yellow dresses were packaged away in parcels, along with petticoats, stockings, underthings, socks, pyjamas, dressing-gowns, two pairs of gloves (one of dragonhide and one of kid leather), two other pairs of shoes (one pair of sturdy boots and one pair of sensible loafers) and a pair of rabbit-fur muffs (one black and one white).  The bill came to forty-seven Galleons and Violet counted out the gold coins from her satchel before sitting down in the reception area to wait for Professor McGonagall.  One of the shop attendants brought her a cup of tea.

Draco was already there with his own cup of tea, dressed in grey robes that looked like some of the ones Violet had seen on people in the street.  He stopped and grinned at her.  ‘You look like a girl!’ he said.

‘I am a girl,’ retorted Violet playfully.  ‘Do you like it?’

‘I guess.  Are you waiting for the professor?  My mother said she’d come pick me up.’

‘Isn’t your father closer?  You said he was just next door.’

Draco stared at his knees, and suddenly Violet wished she hadn’t brought it up.  ‘He’s always really busy.’

Before she could think of anything to say, the door opened with a jangling of bells, and in walked the most beautiful woman Violet had ever seen.  She was tall and slim and pale with smooth golden hair and a delicate, angelic face.  She wore robes of pure white, floaty and graceful.  Violet thought she looked like a fairy queen.

‘Mother!’ said Draco excitedly.  He jumped to his feet and hurried over to her.  ‘This is Violet Potter!  Violet, this is my mother, Madam Malfoy.’

Narcissa Malfoy smiled as she approached, and Violet instinctively stood up.  ‘Miss Potter!’ she said in a soft, somehow laughing voice.  ‘How lovely to meet you.’

‘How do you do,’ said Violet politely.

‘Surely you are not here on your own?’ asked Narcissa with a frown.

‘No, Madam Malfoy,’ said Violet.  ‘Professor McGonagall is helping me buy my school things.’

‘Dear Minerva!’ exclaimed Narcissa.  ‘And how is she?’

‘I am quite well, Madam Malfoy,’ said Professor McGonagall as she entered the shop.  ‘Good day.  And this must be your son, young Master Malfoy.’

Violet stifled a giggle to hear him called “Master Malfoy”.  Draco went pink and Narcissa smiled indulgently.

‘We must be going,’ said Professor McGonagall.  ‘Say goodbye, Miss Potter.’

‘Bye, Draco.  It was nice to meet you, Madam Malfoy.’

‘And you, dear,’ said Narcissa.  ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again.’

Violet hoped so.  Draco was alright, for a boy, but Violet wanted to see Narcissa again, to stare at her and stare at her, she was so pretty.  Professor McGonagall paid a Sickle to have their parcels delivered to the Leaky Cauldron and they left the shop.

‘Professor...’ said Violet hesitantly.  ‘When I was in there just now, that boy – Draco – acted like he knew who I was.  I told him my name and he said wow, like he was really impressed.’

Professor McGonagall sighed.  ‘Violet, I promise I’ll explain everything, but let’s just finish our shopping and get back to the Leaky Cauldron.  We'll drop in at the apothecary and get some of your potion supplies first.  I think Ollivander’s is already closed, but we can always get your wand tomorrow.’

The apothecary was a dark, cool shop, full of strange smells and mysterious jars and bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling.  Violet stared in fascination at a jar of unicorn horns.

‘Are unicorns real?’ she whispered, admiring the pearly spirals with their silver sheen.

‘Oh yes.  There are some in the forest south of Hogwarts.  Put it out of your mind, though – if I ever catch you near the Forbidden Forest, you’ll live to regret it, my girl.’

They got a pewter cauldron, some beautiful crystal vials whose rack Violet kept shaking gently because she loved the chiming noises they made and a set of scales.  In the shop next door, which sold sextants, astrolabes, compasses, and all sorts of devices Violet couldn’t put a name to, Professor McGonagall haggled over a telescope while Violet admired a model of the solar system, little planets and moons orbiting a fiery sun under a glass dome.

Finally, they went back to the Leaky Cauldron.  Violet’s legs ached after a long day of shopping.  The sun was setting, making all the shadows lengthen and everything look mysterious and lovely.  The shop windows were being lit, and glass lanterns were hung from every awning and above every door, making the Alley gleam and twinkle.  It showed no sign of quietening; even at this late hour, witches and wizards shopped and argued over prices.

Tom led them upstairs to a little room with a sloping roof.  It had a huge, soft feather bed and Violet sat down in it, carefully taking off her shoes.  Professor McGonagall sat down at a little table nearby which was piled high with parcels.  ‘You’ll need a trunk...’ she murmured.

‘Professor?’ said Violet, putting away her brand new shoes and curling her silk-stockinged feet up under her skirts.  ‘You said you’d explain to me about... about my parents.’

‘So I did.’  Professor McGonagall sighed, and she looked very sad.  Violet was suddenly struck by how old she looked.  ‘This isn’t going to be pleasant, but it’s better that you know.  Not all witches and wizards are good people.  Just like with Muggles – non-magical folk – there are very good people and there are very wicked people.  Some people use their magic to hurt or frighten others.  We call them Dark wizards and witches.  You’ll learn about some in History of Magic, I imagine – Herpo the Foul was one, and Morgan le Fay was another.  About twenty years ago, there was a wizard went to the bad.  He believed that magical people with Muggle parents – people like your mother – weren’t fit to do magic, and that Muggles ought to be ruled by magical folk.  He used magic to kill anyone who got in his way, and his followers did a lot of terrible things.’

Violet was listening with her eyes wide and her heart beating very fast.

‘There were some people who were fighting him.  Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster at Hogwarts, helped organise us.  Your parents included.  Your father’s family, the Potters, was very old and very rich, and he used his money to help us, but he couldn’t do much – he had you and your mother to look after.  But this Dark wizard’s followers came to his house in Hampshire and attacked it, and he and your mother went to London to hide, but they were attacked again and they went to Hogwarts.  Hogwarts was the one safe place during this Dark wizard’s war – he was always too afraid of Professor Dumbledore to try to take over there.  But on their way there, they were attacked a third time, so Professor Dumbledore hid them away in a village called Godric’s Hollow.  And about ten years ago, when you were just one, he came to the house where you all were staying, and – ‘ Professor McGonagall broke off suddenly and wiped her eyes.

‘He killed your parents, Violet.  And then he tried to kill you.  But something happened and his curse turned back on him and destroyed him.  It destroyed nearly the whole house, but you were alright.  That’s where the scar on your forehead came from.  That’s where the curse hit you.’

‘Green,’ said Violet suddenly, and Professor McGonagall blinked.  ‘I remember – Green light.  And someone was laughing.’

Professor McGonagall nodded sadly.  ‘Professor Dumbledore brought you to live with your aunt and uncle.  And the Dark wizard disappeared – nobody knows where.  He lost all his power and vanished.  Most people say he’s died, but they never found the body.  And that’s why you’re famous, Violet.  That’s why everyone in our world knows your name.  Nobody else lived after he came after them – nobody but you.  You were just a tiny baby and you destroyed him.’

Violet’s eyes were prickling with tears but she didn’t cry.  She sat there, staring at the soft blue wool of her dress.  So her parents hadn’t been freaks or layabouts.  They’d been heroes!  They’d fought a Dark wizard and escaped from him three times!

‘What was his name?  The Dark wizard?’

‘Voldemort,’ said Professor McGonagall quietly.  ‘I wouldn’t use that name in public, Miss Potter.  People tend to be uncomfortable with it.’

‘I have a house?’ said Violet, registering that her father’s family had owned a place in Hampshire.

‘A mansion, really.  It was badly damaged when your parents were attacked, but you’ll inherit once you turn seventeen, along with other heirlooms and things.  They’re being held in trust until you come of age, but a certain amount of the interest goes into your account every year, and... Never mind,’ she added quickly, seeing that Violet had no idea what she was saying.

It had been a very long day, and this was a lot to take in.  Violet wondered if they were going to go back to the Dursleys.  They would never let her keep all these things, the gold and silver, the books of magic, the beautiful new dresses.  She hadn’t even gotten her magic wand yet!  She didn’t think she could bear to go back to Privet Drive, to the poky little cupboard under the stairs, away from magic and Diagon Alley and Professor McGonagall and Narcissa Malfoy.

There came a tap at the door, and this proved to be the most welcome distraction of Tom the landlord, two dinner trays floating in the air before him.  Violet fell upon her dinner like a starving person.  Professor McGonagall pursed her lips but said nothing, sipping her Gillywater.  Perhaps she thought that having grown up around the Dursleys meant that kitchen manners might be overlooked.


	8. The Wand and the Wizard

“ _You crippled you with pain and lies,_  
 _You’re hurting all the time; and elf,_  
 _You built your prison cell yourself_  
 _Then schemed and dreamed of open skies._  
 _Princess! The river holds the trout;_  
 _So does the world take care of me._  
 _And if you do not choose to see_  
 _That what we are, we choose to be,_  
 _It’s hard, but all is one to me._  
 _The rule is cruel, but there’s no doubt --_  
 _I’ll dream tonight of storms at sea..._  
 _Be sure your sins will find you out._ ”

Violet devoured the potato and bacon soup and cold chicken in record time.  She was ravenously hungry, and was glad of something to distract her.  The thought of going back to the Dursleys after a day in Diagon Alley was nightmarish.  But when the food was done, there was nothing for it but to ask.

‘Professor?’ said Violet hesitantly.  ‘When are we going home?’

‘Back to your aunt’s house, you mean?’  The professor snorted.  ‘Not tonight, Miss Potter.  I am not certain you would be in good hands with them.  Tonight you will stay here while I return to Hogwarts to speak with Professor Dumbledore.  Tomorrow, I shall return and we shall finish your school shopping – just your wand left, I think.  I did send for your birthday present, but...’

‘You got me a birthday present?’ said Violet before she could stop herself, startled.

‘Of course.  I am not entirely clear it is proper, since I am your teacher, but... I think, perhaps, your birthdays haven’t always been as nice as they should have been.’

Violet looked down.  ‘I’ve... never gotten a birthday present before,’ she admitted in a small voice.

There came a tap at the door.  Professor McGonagall answered it, then stood back with a small smile.  It was the landlord Tom again, carrying something that was covered with a red cloth, and a maid carrying a small chocolate cake in which sat eleven candles.

‘Happy birthday, Violet,’ she said kindly.

Violet sat there and gasped, her eyes getting bigger and rounder as Tom and the maid set the cake and gift down and left the room, singing Happy Birthday to You at the tops of their voices.

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

Professor McGonagall gave her wand a small flick and the red cloth slid off a golden birdcage.  Violet gave a soft cry of admiration, for sitting inside was a pale barn owl which gave a soft hoot.

‘Oh – oh – she’s beautiful,’ cried Violet, and began to cry.  Professor McGonagall gave her a handkerchief and put an arm around her shoulders, not saying anything – just waiting.

It was silly, crying over cake and a present.  But it had been a very long day, and Violet was tired and there had been many new things she’d had to adjust to, from finding out magic was real to her first ever birthday present and cake with candles of her very own to blow out.  The best day of her young life, the sweetest and most exciting day of all her young eleven years, but it hurt a little too – like warm water on skin chilled by wind and snow.

Eventually, she calmed down enough to blow out her candles and let the beautiful barn owl out of her cage.  She turned her head to look at Violet inquisitively, perched on her arm.

‘Thank you,’ she said, sniffling a little.  ‘What’s her name?’

‘She doesn’t have one yet.  What will you call her?’

Violet gave the professor a watery smile.  ‘I thought I’d call her Athena.’

Professor McGonagall grinned.

 

Minerva left Violet Potter fast asleep with a promise to be back around lunchtime tomorrow, worn out by the day’s excursion.  After putting a charm on the birthday cake so it wouldn’t go stale and letting the owl out to hunt, she made Violet change into her brand new pyjamas (they had Fwoopers on them) and go to bed.  Professor McGonagall had never tucked anyone in, but she tried rather awkwardly, and Violet curled up and fell asleep almost instantly.  She wondered sorrowfully if this was the first time the poor child had ever been tucked in and kissed goodnight.

Going downstairs, she asked the use of their floo.  Throwing a handful of powder into the flames, she stepped in and shouted, ‘Dumbledore’s office!’

She didn’t bother to be allowed through.  She stepped out onto the hearth, dusting ash off her robes.

‘Albus!’ she shouted.  ‘Albus, come out here right now!’  Never mind that he was a hundred years her senior, or a vastly powerful wizard, or her professional superior.  She was furious, and intended to let him know it.  ‘Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, attend to me this instant!’

Albus emerged from an adjacent room, resplendent in deep lavender robes.  ‘Minerva?’ he said mildly.  ‘Why all the excitement?’

‘I’ll tell you why!’ she raged.  ‘Violet Potter is why!’

In an instant, he was alert, his voice quicker, sharper, more authoritative.  ‘What about her?  Is she hurt?’

‘Not at the moment, no thanks to those monstrous Muggles you left her with!’

‘Minerva, stop pacing.  Please, sit and tell me everything.’

Half an hour later, she was waving an empty tumbler around as Albus nursed a glass of port.  ‘...and she’s been kept in a cupboard, Albus!  In a cupboard under the stairs with a lock on the outside while her great lump of a cousin has two bedrooms!  It’s spite, that’s what it is, pure spite!  I was in a mind to call the Muggle police and have them both sent up for being absolute brutes!  The daughter of Lily and James Potter, the Girl Who Lived, that sweet, beautiful little girl, locked up in a cupboard like some house-elf!’

‘This is... disturbing,’ murmured Albus.  ‘I always thought that surely Petunia... And when Arabella told me that the child was given chores, I was simply glad that she would come to Hogwarts with a work ethic.’  He stood and began pacing.  ‘I think I may have made a grave error in judgement, and done Miss Potter a terrible disservice.  Minerva, tomorrow we shall go and see the Dursleys.’

 

When Violet woke up, she wasn’t sure where she was.  She was curled up in a feather bed with lovely soft sheets and a great fluffy pillow, and she was warm and comfortable and the whole room was quiet.  Then the memories of the past day came flooding back to her, and she rose with a feeling of swelling joy.  Brushing her teeth in the little bathroom, she decided to take a bubble bath.  She’d never had one before, and enjoyed seeing the enormous pink and purple bubbles floating up around her and bobbing around the ceiling.  Finally, smelling like lavender, she got out of the bath, dried off and put on the red robes.  They fit her perfectly, and in her brand new boots she ran from one end of the room the other, vaulting over a chair as she went, revelling in the feeling of shoes that fit properly and pants that weren’t so long she was constantly tripping over them.  She didn’t intend to wait for Professor McGonagall to come back at all.  She was going to explore the Alley, and probably buy a magic wand.  She would make sure to be back before lunch and Professor McGonagall would be none the wiser.

She tied her hair with the ribbon Professor McGonagall had given her, ate some birthday cake and went downstairs.  Everyone went quiet as they saw her come down and erupted into whispers a moment later.

‘Yes, that’s her – ‘

‘Violet Potter, that’s who I heard – ‘

‘Yes, the night maid told me – ‘

Violet went to the bar and clambered up onto a stool, very conscious of everyone discreetly staring at her.  ‘Could I have some toast and some eggs and some orange juice, please?’

‘That’ll be fourteen Sickles,’ said the barman, a little awestruck.  It was very disconcerting.

Violet paid and ate breakfast as conversation slowly resumed, but she remained very aware that people were watching her.  When she was done, she slid off the stool and went out to explore the Alley.  A nice witch helped her open the wall and she wandered out into the Alley.  She spent some time simply wandering, admiring the shops, and ended up near Gringotts before deciding she should go find a wand shop.  However, she had no idea where it might be, so she went over to Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, reasoning that a man who sold ice cream could hardly be a bad person.  It was a gleaming, brightly-lit place with large windows and walls of pale pink and cream, and great tubs of ice cream so cold they were giving off mist.  They had flavours like chocolate, strawberry and vanilla, but also ice cream labelled Heartache, Childhood’s End, Season of Mists and Brouhaha.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, rather shyly.  The big man behind the counter peered down at her in surprise.  ‘Could you tell me where they sell wands?’

‘All alone, are you, sweetheart?’ he said, looking anxious.  ‘That’s not safe.  Where’s your – Merlin’s beard.’  His eyes had found the scar on her forehead.  ‘Violet – Violet Potter?’

‘Um, yes,’ said Violet as he hurried around the counter to shake her hand.

‘Miss Potter, what an honour to meet you – I’ve always wanted to shake your hand – Goodness me, I’m all in a flutter.’

‘It’s very nice to meet you,’ she said.

‘What was it you wanted, sweetheart?  The wand shop?  Well, there’s the Emporium of Arimathea down the way, or Ollivander’s just up the road, near the entrance to the Alley.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, turning to go.

‘Won’t you stay for an ice cream, Miss Potter?  On the house!’

Violet paused – ice creams were not something to be turned down lightly – and said, ‘Oh, alright.  Thank you!’

She ate a strawberry and chocolate ice cream with chopped nuts, and then accepted a sundae Florean called the Morrigan, with three layers of chocolate: white, milk and dark, all veined with fizzing sherbet that made her feel light and bubbly.  When she got up to leave, instead of walking, the force of standing up caused her to float into the air, soaring lightly across the shop.  She shouted her thanks to Florean as she sailed out the door past a tall boy with blond hair coming in with his parents.

The feeling of lightness was fun at first but wore off in a minute or two, for which she was glad, as she was getting quite dizzy, and was very glad of being able to walk down the street in the regular way.

She found Ollivander’s, a rather ramshackle old shop with a single wand sitting on a dusty cushion in the window.  Inside, it was all very dark and musty, with shelves all the way up to the ceiling full of long, narrow boxes.  It smelled fragrantly of old wood and polish, like a carpenter’s shop.

‘Hello?’ she called softly, and jumped when a voice answered from the back of the shop.

‘Be right with you.’  A spindly, white-haired man came drifting out from among the stacks, peering down at her.  ‘Your first wand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said eagerly.

‘Right, which hand is your wand hand?’

‘Well, I’m right-handed...’

The old man, presumably Ollivander, swooped down with a measuring tape and began taking her measurements, shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist, wrist to fingertip.  ‘Each wand,’ he said as he measured, ‘consists of a magical core inside a casing of specially-harvested wood.  We use unicorn tail hairs, phoenix feathers and dragon heartstrings.  No two wands are alike, just as no two wizards, unicorns, phoenixes or dragons are quite alike, and you will never obtain such good results with someone else’s wand.’  He dropped the tape and pulled out a box from one of the shelves.  It contained a wand which Violet reached for eagerly.  ‘Go on, give it a wave.’

She waved it about, but nothing happened and he took it off her.  ‘No, no, try this one.  Hazel, phoenix feather core, rather whippy.’  Violet lifted it, but Ollivander took it away again.  ‘Hmm, let’s see... Here, see how this works, cherry and unicorn tail hair, unyielding.’  He took that one away as well.

It was like shopping for clothes the previous day, except not nearly as fun.  She tried wand after wand, and the pile of boxes in the spindly chair by the door grew.  Ollivander didn’t seem discouraged, however, and brought out wand after wand.  ‘Hmm, I wonder... Unusual wand for an unusual witch, perhaps?  Eleven inches, holly, phoenix tail feather, nice and supple.  Go on, give it a try.’

It felt warm in her hand, almost alive, and as she waved it, it sprayed red and gold sparks, and Ollivander beamed.  ‘Oh, very nice, very nice indeed!  Well done, Miss...?’

Violet waited a little too long before realising he wanted her name.  ‘Oh!  Potter.  My name’s Violet Potter.’

‘Violet Potter?’ said Ollivander in surprise, his large, misty eyes widening.  ‘Of course you are, my dear... Of course you are.’  He boxed her wand and she paid seven Galleons for it.  ‘It is a... remarkable wand, Miss Potter.  It will serve you well.’

 

When Minerva returned to the Leaky Cauldron to collect Violet and take her to buy a wand before returning to Little Whinging, she found that the girl had already got a wand.  The Standard Book of Spells was open on the floor next to her and she was trying to make one of her shoes float.  ‘ _Wingardium leviosa_!’

‘You’re saying it wrong,’ said Minerva automatically, lowering her own wand.  The trunk that had floated in behind her sank down to the floor.  ‘It’s levi _o_ sa, not levios _a_.  Good wandwork, though.  Swish and flick.’

‘ _Wingardium leviosa_ ,’ said Violet, and the shoe rose a foot into the air.  Minerva was impressed.

‘Well done, Miss Potter, but once you have started at Hogwarts, you are not to use magic outside of school.  The Ministry keeps an eye on such things.  Come along, Miss Potter.  I brought you a trunk.  Let’s have lunch while the maid packs away your things, and then we’ll go back to your aunt’s house.’

Minerva ordered the steak and kidney pie while Violet had chips and a sausage roll and baked potatoes, talking in rapid bursts of chatter between mouthfuls of food, rhapsodising about Ollivander and Fortescue and the Alley and wasn’t magic wonderful?  She marvelled at the child’s appetite, but she supposed that being kept in a cupboard meant you took your meals whenever and wherever you could.

When they were done, they went upstairs and collected Violet’s trunk.  It was a battered but serviceable old thing of leather and brass that she’d picked up for a Galleon from a second-hand shop in Abnorm Alley; a few flicks of her wand had repaired any damage and it was as good as new, barring a few scratches and scuff marks.  Minerva was a practical woman and didn’t hold with spending more money than was necessary, never mind that the girl was minted.  She shrank the trunk and its contents to the size of a matchbox and put it in the pocket of Violet’s red robes.

From the alley a few blocks down the road, they Apparated back to Little Whinging, and then walked the short distance back to Privet Drive.  The front door was unlocked and they walked in without knocking.

The Dursleys were in their sitting room, all three of them, corpulent father, shrewish mother, curiously amorphous pink mass of a son, and sitting opposite them was a tall, thin man with long silver hair and a long silvery beard and half-moon spectacles, wearing a deep purple suit.

‘Miss Violet Potter,’ he said gravely as he stood to receive the ladies, holding out his hand for Violet to shake.  ‘I am very pleased to meet you.  My name is Albus Dumbledore.’


	9. Magic Mirrors and Debit Cards

“ _Lie there, lie there, you false sir knight,_  
 _Lie there and let me be._  
 _It’s seven maids that you have drowned,_  
 _But the eighth one has drowned thee._ ”

Violet sat down on a footstool as Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall sat down in armchairs facing the Dursleys across the coffee table, sitting on the sofa.  She was very conscious of her aunt and uncle staring in disapproval at her new clothes, but refused to shrink away or look apologetic.  She was a witch now.  She had a wand and everything.  She was rich and her parents were heroes and if the Dursleys tried anything they would end up as scorch marks on the wall.  She had no idea how to blast people with magic, but she imagined it couldn’t be that hard. Jadis could do it.

 ‘Ten years ago, I brought Violet here to be safe,’ said Professor Dumbledore.  ‘I charged you, Petunia, with raising her as your own.  You have not done this.  You have treated her with the most appalling cruelty and allowed your husband to do the same.’

Violet watched in fascination as Aunt Petunia sank into the sofa.  It was _exactly_ like seeing her get scolded by the Headmaster.

‘You have committed grave offences against your own flesh and blood.  You have done things that would see you imprisoned by any law that had an interest in protecting children.  Believe me when I say that I am here to see it corrected.’  His voice was colder than cold, and Violet suddenly knew in her bones that should he choose to do it, he could blast the entire room to cinders.  ‘However, Violet will always be safest wherever her blood resides, and for the moment, that is with you.  I am not going to remove her from your care, but you will treat her with more kindness from now on.  I shall see to it.  Now please busy yourselves somewhere out of hearing.’

Uncle Vernon opened his mouth as if to protest at being so rudely dismissed in his own home, but Aunt Petunia snapped, ‘Vernon!’ and led Dudley away by the hand, who was still gawping over his shoulder at Professor Dumbledore, and Uncle Vernon was obliged to follow her after one last glare.

He turned to Violet and Professor McGonagall, offering them a paper bag.  ‘Sherbet lemon?’

Violet took one.  Professor McGonagall wrinkled her nose.  ‘You know I can’t stand them, Albus.’

‘Now, Miss Potter,’ he said seriously, although there was no trace of coldness in his voice, only gentle concern, ‘I want you to tell me truthfully: do your aunt and uncle treat you very badly?’

Violet sucked on the sweet thoughtfully.  Her first instinct had been to say _no_ – after all, Aunt Petunia brought her food when she didn’t have enough to eat, and if you could keep away from Uncle Vernon when he was in a mood you stood a fair chance of avoiding any bruises.  But then she remembered the times Uncle Vernon had laid hands on her and what she’d been told to tell people – that she’d fallen off her bicycle, that she’d walked into a doorknob, that she’d slipped in the bath.  That she was clumsy, that she got migraines and couldn’t leave the house for days at a time so her teachers tutted and said she had to make an effort.  She remembered the hard work and the long hungry hours when Aunt Petunia couldn’t or forgot to unlock the cupboard door and the secret nightmares of being left in there to starve to death in the darkness.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly.  ‘Yes they do.’  Professor Dumbledore’s gaze made her feel like she was being x-rayed; she was quite certain that it would be impossible to lie with him looking at you like that.

‘I am very sorry to hear it,’ said Professor Dumbledore, and he looked it too.  ‘It was my decision to place you here after your parents died, and I beg your pardon for it.  It was only for your protection, but still, I fear I placed you in harm’s way nonetheless.’

‘Aunt Petunia tries,’ Violet blurted out suddenly.  ‘She tries to help sometimes.’

‘Not enough,’ was all Professor Dumbledore said, and from his tone Violet could tell that the topic was closed.  ‘Now, Professor McGonagall says that you told her your cousin has two bedrooms.  This seems a little excessive, considering where you were sleeping before.  If you will accompany me, you will see that his second bedroom has been repurposed while you were away.’

They went upstairs, and Violet could hear the Dursleys talking in low and furious voices in the kitchen.  She wondered if Professor Dumbledore would hex them into being nice, and tried to remember if she had ever read of such enchantments in storybooks.  She could only think of Eustace, who had been turned into a dragon and learned to be kind to other people that way, but the Dursleys were probably too old to send to Narnia.  Except Dudley, of course, but Violet didn’t want him to go without her.

‘Violet produced a very fine Levitation Charm this afternoon,’ Professor McGonagall was telling Professor Dumbledore.  ‘She’ll be a fine student.  Your mother was quite gifted with Charms, as I recall.’  This last was said to Violet.  ‘In fact, both your parents were excellent students.  I shall expect excellence from you as well, Miss Potter.’

‘Yes, Professor,’ said Violet, making up her mind at that very moment to be the best witch there ever was.  One day, Professor McGonagall would tell her that she was just as excellent as either of her parents.

They reached the second floor and Professor Dumbledore opened the door to Dudley’s second bedroom.  Violet gasped.

The last time she’d been in here to tidy up, it had been full of junk.  Broken and discarded things that Dudley didn’t want or need anymore, books he’d never read, games whose pieces he’d broken or lost or thrown out the window in a tantrum.  Now it was a beautiful little room with a four-poster bed like she’d seen in a picture-book once, its hangings and sheets a pale gauzy purple.  There was a desk by the window where she could sit and do homework perhaps, or draw what she saw in the street.  Most of the broken toys and games were gone, except for a few soft toys that had been repaired and cleaned – probably with magic, she thought.  The books that Dudley had never touched were sitting on a shelf by the bed, and on the other side was a chest of drawers with the wedding picture of Violet’s parents was sitting on it.  A dresser with a mirror stood against one wall by the door.

‘Gosh,’ was all she could say.

‘Do you like it, Miss Potter?’ asked Professor Dumbledore mildly.

‘I love it,’ breathed Violet, and right on cue, a barn owl landed on the window’s open sill.  ‘Athena!’

While Violet and Professor McGonagall unpacked the day’s purchases, hanging up clothes, folding them and putting them away, shelving books and rearranging the interior of her trunk so it held everything better, Professor Dumbledore brought out his wand and began to do magic.  Violet was certain that any magic Professor Dumbledore did would be of a strange and brilliant kind and so she kept an eye on him.  She was not disappointed.

He pointed his wand at the ceiling and a globe of blue light shot from its tip, splitting into four and flying to the corners of the room, trailing sparkles that Violet tried to catch as they fell.  They sank slowly into the floor, and the room was filled with a soft blue glow.

‘Say your name, Miss Potter,’ said Professor Dumbledore.  ‘Your full name.’

‘Violet Petunia Potter,’ said Violet, and the glow faded.

‘There we are,’ said Professor Dumbledore cheerfully.  ‘Violet Petunia Potter’s room.  Miss Potter, no one will be able to enter this room without your leave.  I think you will find that useful, but nonetheless, I shall speak to your guardians before I leave.  If you ever have need of me, simply look into your mirror and say my name: Albus Dumbledore.  I shall answer you if I can.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Violet, staring at the mirror in wonder.  Her very own magic mirror!  She was a proper witch now.

‘Now it is time to speak with your aunt and uncle.  Miss Potter, perhaps you had best stay here for the time being.’

Violet nodded and pulled _The Wind in the Willows_ from the little shelf.  She hadn’t read that one yet – it was one of the longest ones, a beautiful book with a green cover and picture of a man with goat-legs on it in gold.

 

 

‘Petunia, Vernon,’ said Albus pleasantly as he and Minerva entered the kitchen.  ‘Might we speak away from your son?’

‘Dudders, run along upstairs,’ said Petunia in a valiant attempt and cheerfulness.  Minerva admired her mental fortitude, if nothing else; even now, her voice trilling with panic, she was trying to pretend everything was normal.

The son waddled away and Albus regarded his parents gravely.  ‘I understand that you think that we are interfering.  That we have no right to criticise your ways or order your life.  Ordinarily I would understand, but the way you have abused Violet Potter is beyond reason or excuse.  I have ensured that she has a safe haven and the means to contact me if you ever mistreat her again.’  Albus seemed to grow several inches as he spoke, his voice becoming cold and flat.  ‘And if she does, I will make sure she is taken away from you.  I will make absolutely certain that you are disgraced and imprisoned.  Your son will be removed from this house and placed in care.  You will be known everywhere as cruel and wicked people.’

‘You – You’ve no proof of anything!’ blustered Vernon.

‘I have the word of Violet Potter,’ said Albus.  ‘And the testimony of Arabella Figg, to whom I spoke before coming here. I... must admit that I was not as attentive to her as I should have been, but rest assured that I shall be from now on.  Now, we must speak with Violet one more time before we go.’

Minerva went upstairs to fetch her.  Violet had already changed into her new Fwooper-patterned pyjamas.

‘Violet?  The Headmaster would like to speak to you before we leave.’

Violet left her book on the bed and sprang lightly downstairs, barefoot, with Minerva following behind at a more sedate pace.  She froze at the foot of the stairs when she saw the Dursleys, but Uncle Vernon turned on his heel and stormed off into the den.

‘Miss Potter,’ said Albus cheerfully.  ‘I realise I am a little late, but I hope you had a very pleasant birthday.’  From within the voluminous folds of his cloak he produced what looked like a regular box of Honeydukes chocolate, but he gave it a sharp shake and it snapped out like a telescope to six times its height.  Petunia shrieked in shock.  No one paid any attention.

‘Thank you, sir!’ said Violet, clearly delighted.

‘You’re very welcome, Miss Potter,’ said Albus.  ‘Professor McGonagall was afraid it might be too much for you – ‘

‘I can finish it,’ vowed Violet, and Minerva exchanged a smile with Albus.

‘I’m quite sure you can, Miss Potter.  A wiser man would tell you to make it last, but I shall simply say that it may be worth the boasting rights to finish the whole thing at once.’  He winked one bright blue eye.  ‘And this last gift is a tool, not a luxury.’  It was her Gringotts key, tiny and golden, hanging on a gold chain.  ‘While I am still the executor of your parents’ estate, I have authorised them to permit you access to the interest from your trust fund to the tune of some seventy Galleons a week.’

‘She has a trust fund?’ said Petunia, speaking for the first time.  Minerva gave her the most withering look she could muster.  Trust this harpy to butt in when there was talk of money!

‘Yes, indeed,’ was all Albus said.

‘How much is seventy Galleons in pounds?’ asked Violet as she clasped the chain around her neck, shaking back her shaggy dark hair with a look on her face that told Minerva she was trying to work it out in her head.  Minerva did a few quick sums; that Outstanding NEWT in Arithmancy hadn’t gone to waste.

‘Seven hundred and ten pounds, give or take,’ said Minerva.  She had the pleasure of hearing Petunia make a faint noise of shock.  ‘You should have enough to buy whatever little pleasures you fancy, but nothing extravagant.  We won’t be pleased to hear that you’ve bankrupted yourself before you’ve even come of age.’

‘How am I supposed to get at it?’ asked Violet blankly.  ‘I can’t go all the way to Diagon Alley by myself.’  In reply, Albus produced a debit card.  At this, Petunia’s endurance failed her and she sat down heavily on the stairs.

As they prepared to Disapparate, Violet gave Minerva a hug around the middle.  Minerva stroked her hair, hoping that she would be alright.  It didn’t feel like enough.  What if they frightened her so badly she couldn’t tell anyone?  What if they hurt her anyway?  She felt a rush of something fierce and tender – something dangerously maternal.

‘I shall expect you to have read your school books by the time term starts,’ she said, trying to sound stern.  ‘And remember that once you begin your first year at Hogwarts, you are not to use magic at all outside of school.  And for mercy’s sake, Miss Potter, do not let other Muggles know about magic.’  She wanted to add something about the wizarding world having only survived so long because of its being hidden, but she could feel herself tearing up and let the girl go before she made a fool of herself.

To Albus, the little girl offered a hand, and Albus shook it.  ‘We shall see you at Hogwarts, Miss Potter,’ he said with a smile, and as one they Disapparated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shut up, I'm making Wizarding debit cards that work in the Muggle world a thing.


	10. The Hogwarts Express

“ _We’re off to see the Wizard,_  
 _The wonderful Wizard of Oz!_  
 _We know he is a whiz of a wiz if ever a whiz there was!_ ”

Violet went straight to bed after the professors left, exhausted by the excitement of the past two days.  She kept her wand and _The Standard Book of Spells_ on top of her chest of drawers so they’d be well within reach for when she woke up.  The huge box of chocolate she left by her bed.  After she’d bathed and brushed her teeth, she was asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

She woke early as usual, and passed a couple of hours reading.  She learned that there was more to magic than waving your wand and saying magic words; you had to make specific wand movements, and for some spells you had to focus on a certain thought or idea, and some needed you to concentrate very hard on what you wanted to happen.  The foreword to the book warned that incorrectly cast spells could be quite dangerous, so Violet read over the instructions to the Wand-Lighting Charm five times before attempting it.  They went like this:

 

_WAND-LIGHTING CHARM_

_Lumos (lʉːmɔs)_

_first recorded by Gaia Aemilianis c. 40 BC, Rome; believed to be derived from a similar Greek charm attributed to Asterion Minotauros, Crete, c. 1400 BC  
_

_A spell to cast a steady, heatless light by which to see.  Properly cast, it will produce a source of illumination upon the wand’s tip, most often white or pale blue in colour.  To cast, hold the image of a bright light in your mind and speak the incantation while keeping your wand held in front of you.  Keep the tip pointed away from your face or other persons, as sudden discharges of magic can occur with an improperly cast charm, causing damage to people, property and wands._

Violet shut her eyes, concentrating fiercely.  A bright light.  A candle wouldn’t do.  What was the brightest light she could remember?  For some reason, her old torch came to mind, the one she’d stolen from the garage, the one she used to read in the darkness of the cupboard under the stairs.  A light in the darkness to comfort her and stop her from being scared.

‘Lumos,’ she said, and smiled as a steady white light shone at the tip of her wand.

 

It was the happiest summer of her life thus far, that summer she turned eleven.  That last month before term began was like a golden, endless dream.  The days were long and warm and for the first time she could remember she was spending them doing what she liked.  The Dursleys, terrified of repercussions, left her alone except at mealtimes when they would say things like ‘Pass the salt’ before bolting.  Uncle Vernon tried to avoid looking at her whenever possible, while Dudley only returned from the Polkisses’ to eat and sleep.  Aunt Petunia seemed resigned, and while she was never friendly, she at least became a lot more relaxed where Violet was concerned.

Violet did manage to eat all the chocolate at once, and at the bottom of the box found two books: _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ and _Hogwarts: A History_.  She devoured the fairy-tales in one day, and spent the rest of the summer reading the other in between reading her schoolbooks.  It was over a thousand pages long, the longest book she’d ever read, and she took it with her everywhere.  It was fascinating.  She read about how a thousand years ago, four great sorcerers had founded Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  She read about the four Houses and their virtues and accomplishments; she read about Helga Hufflepuff, who had carved runes of health and strength and luck into every stone of the kitchens, about wise Rowena Ravenclaw, who’d made the floor plan of Hogwarts and taught the illiterate magical children to read and write, about Salazar Slytherin, who had built the castle’s hundreds of secret passages, and about Godric Gryffindor, who’d fought off Dark wizards and witch-hunters who’d attacked the fledgling school.  She read about Hogsmeade, the village that had sprung up around Hogwarts, and the wonders of the grounds and demesnes, and the creatures that lived there – the Merpeople, the centaurs and the giant squid.

She did a lot that summer, a lot of things she had never been able to do before.  She played outside and spent hours lazing around reading.  She made daisy-chains and climbed trees for the fun of it and even talked to other kids.  Most of the children in the village school only knew her as Dudley’s oddball cousin and made fun of her for her crazy hair and ill-fitting clothes, and even the ones who weren’t particularly mean didn’t see enough of her to be friendly.  For the first time, she was able to see them outside of school.  She realised that her new clothes didn’t really fit in, but with her new-found wealth she bought some clothes at the charity shop in town.  A lot of her clothes had come from there, but for the first time she could choose what she wanted to wear, and favoured dresses with bright colours and overalls that she could run around in and brightly-coloured wellington boots.  The old ladies who volunteered at the charity shop thought she was just darling and she was fussed over by them just as much as she had been by Madam Malkin’s assistants.  Armoured in new clothes and a newfound confidence, she found she wasn’t as afraid to talk to other kids when they played on the village green or in the park, and some were happy to let her join in their games of hide and seek, of foot-races around the playground, of secret societies and make-believe.  She brought Athena out once or twice to great acclaim; from that moment on, every child in Little Whinging thought that Violet Potter was the coolest girl ever.  Violet, ever looking to turn situations to her advantage, began charging people a humbug to stroke the owl and a chocolate bar to hold her.  Athena revelled in the attention, although she didn’t like it if they kept her out too long into the day.  Once, she even brought out her copy of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ , reasoning that showing them a book wasn’t really the same as showing them magic, and she and two of her new friends spent an entire afternoon searching for moly, wiggenweld bark and dittany.  It was a kind of joy she’d never known before, to be young and carefree with nowhere to go and nothing to do except have fun.

It was a week or so before she worked up the courage to visit Mr Farrow’s convenience store to pay him back for the caramels and batteries.

‘Excuse me,’ she said gravely to one of the shop assistants.  ‘Could I speak to Mr Farrow, please?’

Violet was shown into Mr Farrow’s office, and he looked up from his desk in surprise.  Violet’s guts were twisting with nerves, and her hands were clenched in her skirts.  She was wearing her nicest dress, the green velvet one, and her hair was neatly tied back with the white hair ribbon Professor McGonagall had given her.  ‘These are yours,’ she said, holding out the deck of cards.  ‘And – and when I was in your office, I took five pounds from your desk.  And I took some caramels and a pack of batteries that you didn’t find.’  She fumbled in her pocket and brought out a rather crumpled ten pound note.  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

He blinked and seemed to notice what she was holding.  ‘That’s very brave of you, sweetheart,’ he said with a smile.  ‘But that’s alright.  You keep them as a reward for being so honest.’

Violet was almost dizzy with relief.  ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Your aunt would be very proud of you.  Did she put you up to this?’

Violet shook her head.  ‘No, sir.’

‘Well, then it’s very good of you to come anyway.  You look...’ He paused, awkward.  ‘Well, you look – happier than you did then.’

She smiled at him.  ‘Thank you, Mr Farrow.  I am very happy.’

 

Violet had once read that an hour is like a year to the prisoner but a moment to the lover, and she’d figured out that this meant that when you were miserable, time went more slowly, but when you were happy, it went fast.  She remembered how slowly the hours had seemed to crawl by when she was locked in her cupboard, true enough.  That last month of summer, on the other hand, must have been very happy, for it seemed like it was over in moments.

Before she knew what was where, September was fast approaching and with it the school term.  An owl arrived carrying a train ticket and instructions on how to get to platform nine and three quarters – you had to run at the barrier between the platforms, said the letter in Professor McGonagall’s neat handwriting, and if any Muggle parents wanted to come through with their children, they would have to keep hold of their child and run with them.

With four days to go until the first of September and no way to get to London, Violet decided to take matters into her own hands.  She broached the topic one night at dinner, the one time when she might be able to catch her aunt and uncle together.

‘Aunt Petunia?  Uncle Vernon?  Could you take me to London on the first of September?’

The two adults exchanged a look.  ‘Why?’ asked Aunt Petunia.

‘My train for school leaves from King’s Cross Station at eleven.’

They exchanged another swift look.  Violet fidgeted.

‘It’s just... I’ve got all my school things, and Professor McGonagall will have told them I’m coming, so if I don’t show up they might send someone here to collect me.’

At that, Uncle Vernon went white and Violet knew she’d said the right thing.

‘Fine,’ grunted Uncle Vernon.

Violet excused herself from the table before pushing her luck any further and skipped upstairs.

 

Violet had always imagined that when the time came for her to leave Privet Drive, she would run and never look back.  She was never sure how she would leave – sometimes she imagined that some wealthy friend of her parents would come and take her in, like in _A Little Princess_ , or sometimes she dreamed about running away – but now, with the start of term only a few days away, Violet felt a deep melancholy come over her.

Summer was dying, dying, she thought that Friday as she wandered through the park, through the golden August afternoon.  How many nights till frost?

She knew that there would be other summers.  But somehow, she knew that they would never be as beautiful as this one.  And with that thought, she ran to the playground to meet Georgia and Astrid and Priya and Nat to tell them that she was going to school at the same school her parents had gone to, up north, and say goodbye for the summer.

 

Violet pushed her trolley down platforms nine and ten, unaccountably nervous.  She was wearing her yellow dress and her hair was tied back with the white ribbon.  Aunt Petunia walked beside her, Uncle Vernon having taken Dudley shopping for toys while she saw Violet off.

‘The letter said I had to walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten,’ said Violet.  ‘Are you coming?’

This last was addressed to Aunt Petunia, whose face was creased in the sharpest frown Violet had ever seen as she twisted and knotted her hands anxiously.

‘What?  Oh – er – ‘

‘You should hold Athena,’ said Violet, handing her the owl’s cage.  Aunt Petunia took it gingerly as if she thought it might infect her.  ‘Come on, hold onto my shoulder – ‘

They began walking toward the barrier and almost banged straight into a tall blond boy pushing his own trolley.  ‘Oh!  Sorry!’

‘It’s fine,’ he said.  ‘Um – were you going to go onto the platform?’

‘Yep,’ said Violet.  ‘Don’t you know how to get on?’

‘Afraid not,’ said the boy with a rueful grin.  ‘My mother dropped me off but didn’t think to tell me how to get on the platform.’

Violet beamed, feeling very wise and in-the-know.  ‘Well, we need to walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten.  I’m Violet, by the way, and this is my Aunt Petunia.’

‘Anthony,’ said the blond boy.  ‘Everyone calls me Tony.  It’s nice to meet you.  Shall we go?’

Together, with Aunt Petunia’s hand on Violet’s shoulder, they walked at the platform.  Violet clenched her teeth and her fists, expecting to crash into it...

And they stood on a train platform next to a gleaming scarlet train that looked like every picture of a steam engine Violet had ever seen, except that it was an eye-smarting shade of red.

Aunt Petunia gasped.  ‘Why, it’s beautiful!’ she exclaimed, and then checked herself as if she’d said something very rude and embarrassing.

Together, they navigated Violet’s trunk and owl into a compartment along with Tony’s.  Violet felt like she ought to hug her aunt or something, but hugging Aunt Petunia was simply something that couldn’t be done.  Violet could no sooner hug her aunt than breathe fire, and so instead she held out her hand for her aunt to shake, grave and old-fashioned.

Once Aunt Petunia had vanished into the crowd, Violet sank down into her train seat with a deep sigh.

‘Is something wrong?’ asked Tony, concerned.

Violet grimaced at the thought of explaining herself to this strange boy.  ‘It’s just... complicated.’

He grinned.  ‘You sound like my mother.  Cheer up!  We’re going to Hogwarts!’

Violet stared at his beaming face, and felt her own smile begin as excitement bubbled up inside her.  ‘We are, aren’t we.’  They looked at each other for a moment, and then both began to laugh and laugh and laugh.

‘Oh, I can’t wait,’ said Violet once they had calmed down a little, catching their breath and wiping their eyes.

‘Did you know you were magic before you got your letter?  Your aunt’s a Muggle, right?’

‘I didn’t know at all,’ admitted Violet.  ‘I didn’t even know magic was real until I got my letter.  What about you?’

‘Well, my father’s a wizard.  He grew up here.  My mother’s a witch, but she didn’t go to Hogwarts.  She went to a school in Israel called the Beth Emet.  I didn’t even know about Hogwarts until I got the letter, but my parents taught me at home in Israel.  She didn’t want me to go to Hogwarts, but she said I could go as long as I promise to apply to the Beth Emet for advanced studies after I graduate.  I can’t wait to get to Hogwarts and get started on learning magic!’

‘Oh, I learned a levitation charm!’ exclaimed Violet, remembering and wanting to show off a little.  ‘Want to see?’

‘Ooh, yes!  I haven’t been able to get many spells to work, but I did accidentally make all the cutlery in our kitchen dance...’ And they fell into a deep discussion about magic as the train began moving.  By the time the sweet-trolley came by as the countryside whizzed past outside the window, they had their copies of _The Standard Book of Spells_ open on their knees and Violet was trying to teach Anthony a levitation charm.

‘No, no – it’s more of a _flick_ – yes, like that – ‘

‘ _Wingardium leviosa_!’

‘Well done, dear!’ said the trolley lady cheerfully, making them jump and Anthony’s shoe fall out of the air.  ‘Anything from the trolley, loves?’

‘Ooh, Chocolate Frogs,’ said Tony.  ‘They’re really hard to get in Israel, my father has to have them specially ordered and it’s really expensive.’  They pooled their money and bought some of everything, and they had a fun time discovering the collectible cards in the Chocolate Frog boxes, and the box of risks that was Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.

‘Is it kosher if I get a bacon-flavoured one?’ said Tony dubiously, examining a pink and white striped bean.

‘What’s kosher?’ asked Violet, and he plunged into an explanation of the rules about what Jewish people could or couldn’t eat, and how you couldn’t do Jewish magic unless you followed the right rules, which led into a discussion about the various magical lineages of the world, and they got out their copies of _Magical Theory_.

‘...Britain is unique because our magical tradition is a mixture of Roman ritual and Druidic practice,’ said Violet, scanning chapter three, Traditions of the West, just as their compartment door slid open.  ‘And – Hello.’

The intruder was a frizzy-haired girl who’d already changed into her own robes.  ‘Hello.  Have either of you seen a toad?  A boy named Neville’s lost one.’

‘No, sorry,’ said Violet, but she wasn’t listening anymore; she was looking at the books open in their laps and the wands in their hands.

‘Oh, are you doing magic?  Let’s see, then.’  She had big teeth and seemed very bossy and sure of herself, and Violet was about to snap at her but Tony butted in.

‘Let me!’ said Tony excitedly.  He waved his wand at his shoe which was sitting on top of his trunk and said, ‘ _Wingardium leviosa_!’

‘No, wait – ‘ interrupted Violet, seeing that he wasn’t waving his wand properly, but too late – his shoe shot off into the air like a cork from a bottle, banging into the compartment’s ceiling.  The girl laughed and clapped.

‘Oh, wow!  I haven’t tried that one yet!  What’s the spell? _Wingardium leviosa_?’

‘It’s in Chapter One of _The Standard Book of Spells_ ,’ said Violet.  She was disliking this bushy-haired busybody more and more every minute.  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be helping someone find a toad?’

‘Oh yes – I should get going.  I’m Hermione Granger, by the way.’

‘I’m Anthony Goldstein,’ said Tony with a big smile.

‘Violet Potter,’ said Violet shortly.

Hermione Granger looked astonished.  ‘Are you really?  I’ve read all about you!  You’re in _Modern Magical History_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_!’

‘Am I really?’ said Violet, interested in spite of herself.  ‘I had no idea!  Do you think I could borrow them sometime?’

‘Of course, if you’ll lend me some of your books.  Anyway, I’ve got to get back to helping Neville look for his toad – I’ll see you at Hogwarts!  Bye!’  And with that she was gone in a flurry of robes and bushy hair.

‘She’s nice,’ said Violet immediately and Tony beamed.  Anyone who would lend out books was alright in Violet’s view, bossy or no.


	11. There's No Place Like Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite a bit of text in this chapter's been taken verbatim from Philosopher's Stone.

“ _I am a magnet for all kinds of deep wonderments,_  
 _I am a wunderkind, oh._  
 _And I live the envelope pushed far enough to believe that_  
 _I am a princess on the way to my throne,_  
 _Destined to serve,_  
 _Destined to rule._ ”

It was getting darker outside and all the shadows were longer.  Hermione Granger reappeared as Tony was teaching Violet about purification rituals.

‘The ashes of a cow?  That’s gross!’ said Violet, clearly fascinated.  ‘Oh, hi, Hermione.’

‘You two should change into your robes,’ she said, bossy as ever.  ‘I’ve just been talking to the driver and he says we’ll be arriving soon.’

‘Did you find Neville’s toad?’ asked Tony as he and Violet began pulling their school uniforms from their trunks.

‘Yes, it was inside his cauldron the whole time,’ said Hermione, rolling her eyes.  ‘I expect I’ll see you at school!  Bye!’  And with that, she bustled off again.  Violet watched her go, a little annoyed but very amused.  Everything about that girl yelled “busybody” – her prancing trot, her perfect posture, her superior little manner.  If you’d gotten all the busybodies in the world and mixed them all together, the result would be Hermione Granger.  She reminded Violet a little bit of Draco, really.

Draco!  Perhaps she would see him at Hogwarts!  And with that thought making her smile, she got changed as Tony very chivalrously went outside to wait.

It was dark by the time the train pulled up, and they hastily shoved their books back into their trunks, leaving them there to be taken up to the castle later.

They got out of the train among a mass of black-robed students.  Hagrid, the giant man Violet had seen at Gringotts, was down one end of the platform waving a lantern.  ‘Firs’-years!’ he was calling.  ‘Firs’-years, over here!’

A knot of anxious-looking kids in black robes were around him.  Violet spotted Draco’s blond hair and ran up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder.  He turned around, annoyed, but broke into a grin when he saw who it was.

‘Violet!’

‘Hi, Draco!  This is Tony.  Tony, this is Draco.’

‘How d’you do,’ said Tony, offering his hand.

‘Hello,’ said Draco, not taking it, barely glancing at him before turning back to Violet.  ‘Isn’t this exciting?  I wonder why we don’t get to go to the castle with the other students.’

‘My dad told me we get to take boats,’ said Tony.  ‘It’s tradition.’

Perhaps it was only Violet’s imagination, but Draco warmed up to Tony quickly after that.

They followed Hagrid down a steep, narrow path where the trees grew so thick on either side that it felt almost indoors.  ‘Yeh’ll get yer fir’ sight o’ Hogwarts in a sec,’ Hagrid called over his shoulder, ‘jus’ round this bend here.’

‘Oooooh!’ said Violet suddenly, for they were on the shore of a great lake.  Its glassy black waters reflected the stars overhead so that it was almost impossible to tell where the sky ended and the water began – and over it all, high on a cliff over the lake, was Hogwarts Castle.  Many-turreted and sparkling with lights, it looked mysterious and lovely and ancient.  It called to something deep inside Violet, it stirred her blood and took her breath away.  It was all her dreams at once.

They followed Hagrid down to the pebbled shore and piled into boats that were waiting there.  Violet clambered into one with Tony and Draco, and almost capsized it by standing up and waving to Hermione.  ‘Hermione!  Come on!’

Hermione stepped daintily into the boat and sat next to Tony.  ‘Hello!  I’m Hermione Granger,’ she said to Draco.  ‘Gosh, this is exciting, isn’t it?  I knew Hogwarts was a castle, but I never thought it would look like this!’

‘Draco, Hermione.  Hermione, Draco.’  Violet was jittery with excitement as the boats set off across the lake, moving silently across the mirrored black surface.  ‘Oh, isn’t this wonderful?’

‘It’s built by magic, you know,’ said Hermione knowledgeably.  ‘It wouldn’t be able to stay up, otherwise.  I read about it in _Hogwarts_ – ‘

‘ – _A History_ ,’ finished Violet with a grin.  ‘But if Muggles look at it, all they see is a crumbling ruin with a sign saying it’s unsafe.’

‘My father told me that the whole grounds are hexed to Hell and back with anti-Muggle charms,’ added Tony.

‘Well it’d have to be,’ said Draco.  ‘I heard that every time a new Headmaster gets the job, they have to add another layer of protective enchantments.’

The three of them fell to chatting about the ancient defensive magic around Hogwarts as Violet simply sat and stared and stared.  She wanted to look at Hogwarts forever.

The boats glided into an ivy-draped opening in the rocky cliff face under Hogwarts, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness Violet saw that it was a boathouse with House pennants on the walls – she looked for the golden lions on red for brave Gryffindor, the bronze eagles on blue for wise Ravenclaw, the black badgers on yellow for honest Hufflepuff and the silver serpents on green for cunning Slytherin – saying that this or that House had won the inter-House rowing competition on some year or other.

Clambering out of the boats, Hagrid led them up a winding staircase to a courtyard and to a huge set of wooden doors and knocked on them with one gigantic fist.

They swung open, and Violet beamed.  Professor McGonagall stood there in emerald green robes and a tall pointy hat.  This was the first time Violet had seen her in robes.  A hush fell over everyone as her gaze swept the massed first-years.

‘The firs’ years, Professor McGonagall,’ said Hagrid.

‘Thank you, Hagrid.  I will take them from here.’  They followed her into a huge stone hall with a high, vaulted roof and a staircase leading up and away.  Professor McGonagall met Violet’s eyes and gave her a small smile before continuing.  ‘Welcome to Hogwarts.  The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses.  The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts.  You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory and spend free time in your House common-room.’

She went on to explain the names and histories of the four Houses, the point system and the House Cup, which Violet had read all about in _Hogwarts: A History_.  She took the chance to look around the hall.  This must be the Entrance Hall.  She’d read about it; a thousand years ago, the Founders had stood here every year on the Feast of Saint Comba to receive new students, each one for six hours in their turn – Ravenclaw in the early dawn, Hufflepuff as the day waxed toward noon, Gryffindor from the day’s zenith onward, and Slytherin late into the night.  The doors would be flung wide open at midnight on the thirtieth of December and remain open all through the day until the final stroke of midnight on the thirty-first when they would be closed, and any prospective students who wished to enter the school would have to wait a whole year to try again.  Four enormous banners hung from the walls on either side, each one depicting a house, and the main door was flanked by twenty-foot-tall hourglasses, one filled with rubies, one with sapphires, one with emeralds and one with amber.

Violet realised she was trembling and rubbed her arms compulsively.  She felt jittery and excited.  This was worse than the time she’d brewed all of Uncle Vernon’s expensive coffee at once and drunk it out of spite.

‘You okay?’ asked Tony, looking worried.  ‘Want my cloak?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Violet.  ‘It’s just... it’s all really happening, isn’t it?  God, we’re going to learn magic!’

‘No need to wet yourself over it,’ drawled Draco like he was too cool to be excited, but even he couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

‘I wonder where the library is,’ said Hermione.  ‘We should go looking for it tomorrow, Violet!’

‘We all should,’ decided Violet.  ‘It’d be useful to know where it is.  And we can share books and things, and study together, and play together, and explore the castle, and – and – ‘

‘Play pranks on the teachers,’ said Tony.

‘Help each other with homework,’ added Hermione.

‘Gossip,’ said Draco thoughtfully.

‘So, we’re agreed?’ said Violet.  ‘Whatever happens, whatever Houses we get put in, we’re friends.  Deal?’  She held out her hand, palm-down.

‘Deal,’ said Tony, clapping his hand over hers.  Hermione placed hers on top.  Draco raised an eyebrow and they all glared at him until he put his hand on top of Hermione’s, who screamed.

She wasn’t the only one.  About a hundred pearly ghosts, shedding a pale silver light, had glided through the far wall and floated across the Entrance Hall, arguing about something or other.  ‘Forgive and forget, I say, give him a second chance – ’ one was saying.

‘They’re just ghosts,’ said Draco, amused.

‘Oh, well, that’s alright then,’ said Hermione sarcastically.  ‘Just floating talking dead people, nothing to worry about, I’m sure!’

‘We’ve got one at home,’ said Draco.  ‘Nothing to worry about.’  The ghosts had floated through the far wall and vanished.

‘What House do you think you’ll be in?’ asked Violet.

‘Slytherin,’ said Draco proudly.  ‘All my family have been in Slytherin for years.’

‘Gryffindor sounds best,’ said Hermione.  ‘I hear Dumbledore was one.’

‘You shouldn’t want to be in a House because Professor Dumbledore was in it,’ said Violet.  ‘Shouldn’t you want to be in a House because it suits you?  You’re smart, I bet you’d do great in Ravenclaw.’

Hermione chewed her lip thoughtfully.  ‘I don’t suppose Ravenclaw would be too bad, but... Well, being brave is worth a lot more than knowing things.  Don’t you think?  If you were a coward who never did anything but knew everything in the world, you’d still be a coward and everybody would detest you.  But if you were brave and strong, even if maybe you weren’t very clever, you might be able to make a difference because you were brave enough to try.’  She looked suddenly embarrassed.  ‘That’s what I think, anyway.  What about you, Violet?’

‘I don’t care, really,’ shrugged Violet.  ‘Long as I can still be friends with you lot.’

‘My dad was in Slytherin,’ said Tony.  ‘My mum didn’t go to Hogwarts.  I could end up anywhere, I guess.’

‘What happens if they can’t sort you properly?’ wondered Hermione.  ‘If they can’t decide whether you’re braver or more cunning or something?  Do you get sent home?’

Draco opened his mouth, perhaps to explain, but then Professor McGonagall came back in to usher them into a hall even huger than the Entrance Hall.  Violet knew at once that this was the Great Hall of Hogwarts, and her breath caught in her throat.  It was full of golden light from the thousands and thousands of candles that twinkled and glowed on every side and reflected off the golden plates and goblets and cutlery, and the ceiling was high and grand and full of stars.  She gaped at them; she’d read about it, but nothing had prepared her for what it was like seeing it for real for the first time.  The stars blazed by the million overhead.  Four long tables ran along the length of the hall, and on the back wall above each one hung a House banner.  The students sat on benches that ran alongside them.

Professor McGonagall placed a ragged, fraying hat on a stool in front of a raised dais where the teachers sat.  Professor Dumbledore caught her eye and winked at her, and she stood up taller, feeling braver already.

‘ _Oh, you may not think I’m pretty,_  
 _But don’t judge on what you see._  
 _I’ll eat myself if you can find_  
 _A smarter hat than me..._ ’

Just as _Hogwarts: A History_ had described it, the Sorting Hat.  Gryffindor’s old travelling hat, enchanted to Sort students into houses.  She vaguely remembered a story in the introduction, a sort of legend, something about each of the Founders putting something inside it.  The Hat sang a long song about the Houses and their virtues to a sort of rollicking country dance tune.  Finally, it grew still and everyone applauded.

Professor McGonagall stepped forward holding a long scroll of parchment.  ‘When I call your name, you will put on the Hat and sit on the stool to be Sorted,’ she said.  ‘Abbott, Hannah!’

And so it began.  Hannah went into Hufflepuff, as did Susan Bones, and Terry Boot went into Ravenclaw.  As the names were called out and children came forward to be Sorted, Violet began to fidget, increasingly nervous.  She noticed that some were Sorted almost instantly, the Hat yelling out the name of a House the moment it touched their heads, but for some it took a few moments, or even several minutes.  As Professor McGonagall called out, ‘Goldstein, Anthony!’ and he stumbled forward to be Sorted, Violet patted his shoulder as he went past.

‘Ravenclaw!’ shouted the Hat, and Tony went to join a table amid great applause.  Hermione was sorted into Gryffindor, and Draco into Slytherin.  So that was it then, thought Violet sadly; she could only be in a House with one of her new friends.  Still, they’d made a deal, and they were going to keep it or Violet would know why.

‘Potter, Violet!’

The Great Hall erupted in whispers as Violet stepped forward.  The Hat was placed on her head, and suddenly she heard a voice talking very quietly in her ear.  'Hmm.  Difficult.  Very difficult.  Very clever, I see, oh yes indeed, and nicely underhanded too – bit resentful, are we?  Audacious too – oh, and there’s a hunger for companionship.  But where to put you?’

‘Can’t I go with one of my friends?’ asked Violet.

‘Your friends?  Priorities, my girl – one of these Houses will help you on the way to greatness, and you’re worried about being with your friends?’

Violet was suddenly furious.  ‘I haven’t had so many that I can just throw them away, you know.  Why’s it so important to you, anyway?  It’s none of your business if I want to be with my friends, I’m sure.’

‘You remind me of your father,’ said the Hat, and Violet’s mouth went dry.  ‘But if you’re sure, better be... HUFFLEPUFF!’

The hall burst into applause, and Hufflepuff House was on its feet cheering.  Violet stood up, took off the hat and put it back down on the stool before walking over to the Hufflepuff table.  She was trembling so terribly that her legs gave way just as she was about to sit down, and she slid onto the bench next to Sally-Anne Perks, who patted her hand cheerfully.  Violet shook hands over the table with a brown-haired boy who introduced himself as Gabriel, Hufflepuff prefect.  She was so relieved – and she wasn’t sure why – that she didn’t even notice that her applause was going on longer and louder than anyone else’s. Why Hufflepuff? She supposed she'd just have to trust the Hat's judgement.

The Sorting finished when Blaise Zabini was put into Slytherin, and Professor Dumbledore rose, lifting both hands for silence.  ‘Welcome!’ he said.  ‘Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts!  Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words.  And here they are: Nitwit!  Blubber!  Oddment!  Tweak!  Thank you!’  He sat back down as everyone applauded.  Sally-Anne was so overcome with fits of giggles that she pressed her lips together and went bright pink and made snorting noises, which looked so funny that it set the rest of the first-years off in peals of laughter too.

Violet craned her neck, looking for her friends.  Draco was deep in conversation with a couple of Slytherins but waved at her when she caught his eye, while Tony beamed and gave her a thumbs up.  She couldn’t see Hermione at all – the Gryffindor table was on the far side of Ravenclaw’s.  She was about to ask if people from different Houses ever sat at other tables, but got distracted when food began appearing on the golden dishes.

‘Oh my God,’ said Violet, almost faint with delight, and began piling food onto her plate.  Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where they were going to teach her to be a witch and food appeared out of thin air.

This place couldn’t be more perfect if it tried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saint Comba, by the way, is the patron saint of witches.


	12. "Badgers hold a secret light"

“ _Onward, ever onward striving!_  
 _Proudly on our brooms we fly_  
 _Straight and true across the treetops,_  
 _Shadows on the moonlit sky._  
 _Ne’er a day shall pass before us_  
 _When we have not tried our best:_  
 _Kept our cauldrons bubbling nicely,_  
 _Cast our spells with zest._ ”

Everyone was getting to know one another as they ate.  Violet sat between pigtail-wearing Sally-Anne Perks and a boy with an upturned nose called Zacharias Smith.  He was talking very loudly to his friends as he ate, although he ignored Violet completely when she asked him to pass the salt, obliging her to lean right across him to get at it, knocking over his goblet of pumpkin juice.  She gave him her sweetest smile when he glared at her and dabbed at the mess with his napkin.

The senior Hufflepuffs were very friendly.  A boy sitting opposite them named Cedric Diggory was talking to his friend about classes and trying to include first-year Ernie Macmillan in a conversation about Transfiguration.  From what Violet overheard, she gathered that Cedric’s family knew Ernie’s, and one of their uncles worked for a Transfiguration magazine.

‘It’ll be great getting started on lessons, huh?’ said Violet cheerfully to Sally-Anne as she attacked a steak.  ‘Transfiguration’ll be a laugh.  Just let my aunt and uncle try to boss me around this summer!  Pow!’  She mimed jabbing her wand at something with her fork.  ‘Turn them all into pigs, see if I don’t.’

‘What’s Transfiguration?’ asked Sally-Anne in a small voice.  Violet looked at her, astonished, and she went pink.  ‘I’m... from a Muggle family.’  She sounded like she’d just learned the word Muggle recently; she said it carefully, as if she wasn’t sure she was saying it right.  The whole time, she fiddled with her jacket potatoes, cutting them to bits, eating the skins and mashing the insides into the gravy.  It was slightly fascinating.

‘Me too,’ said Violet cheerfully.  ‘Well, my parents were a witch and wizard, but I live with my aunt and uncle.  They’re Muggles.  You’re Sally-Anne Perks, right?  That’s a pretty name.  Sounds like a doll’s name.’

‘Thanks,’ said Sally-Anne, smiling shyly.  ‘But everyone just calls me Sally.  You’re Violet, right?’

‘Yep.  And Transfiguration is when they use magic to turn things into other things.  This was Transfigured,’ said Violet, tapping her hair ribbon.  ‘It used to be a daisy.  Professor McGonagall did it for me.’

‘I used to Transfigure things by accident,’ said Ernie Macmillan proudly on Sally’s other side.  ‘It’s supposed to be very rare.’

‘Really?  I jumped thirty feet and made flowers open,’ said Violet.  ‘Did you make any magic, Sally?’

‘I told the future,’ said Sally, finishing the last potato skin and getting started on the gravy and mashed potato.

‘Ooooh,’ said an older girl across the table.  ‘You’re a _seer_!  Just wait until third year, you can take Divination!’

Violet stared at Sally, deeply impressed.  ‘Really?  Do you do fortunes?  Can you tell mine?’

‘I can’t do it on purpose,’ said Sally, blushing under the attention.  ‘And I can’t always remember it afterwards.  Just sometimes... I know what’s going to happen.’

‘Wow,’ said Violet as the girl across the table laughed and said, ‘Stay away from Vegas, sweetie.’

Eventually, the main courses vanished, leaving the golden plates sparkling clean.  Now blocks of ice cream appeared in every flavour, mounds of candied fruits, pastries and chocolates and puddings of every description.

Violet had never had ice cream before that summer, so it was still a great novelty to her.  A second-year girl named Satsu helped her scoop lemon, chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, blueberry and rum ice cream into her bowl.

‘You’ll never be able to finish all that,’ said Sally.  She’d chosen more conservatively with a small chocolate pudding and some tiramisu.

‘Challenge accepted,’ said Violet, and got started.  Sally watched in open admiration.  About a quarter of the way through, the surrounding Hufflepuffs joined in the spectacle.

‘She’s going to be sick.’

‘Oh, I can’t watch.’

‘You can do it, Violet!’

‘Come on, halfway done!’

Spurred on by their encouragement, Violet continued to shovel ice cream into her mouth with the steady, determined pace of an Olympic runner who knew the end was near.  Zacharias Smith gave her a look of deep disgust, but she ignored him.  She was in the zone.

The scrape of her spoon on her bowl told her she’d reached the bottom.  There was a sudden hush as she swallowed the last gulp of ice cream, wiped her mouth on a napkin, and then looked slightly perturbed, placing her hand on her belly.

There was one truth on which Violet could always depend.  The heart of her being, her innermost soul.  A single immutable law by which Violet Potter existed: _there’s always room for more._

She reached out and picked up a chocolate muffin, and a dozen Hufflepuffs burst into applause.

When the dessert  vanished and Violet felt like an overstuffed sofa with that rare, pleasant ache that spoke of having eaten too much, Professor Dumbledore stood up again and silence fell.

‘Ahem – just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered.  I have a few start of term notices to give you.  First years should note that the forest in the grounds is forbidden to all pupils.  And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well.  I have also been asked by Mr Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.  Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of term.  Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch.  And finally, I must tell you that the third floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death.’

Violet, who had been drowsing happily on her seat, pricked up her ears at that.  Forbidden things were how you knew where the adventures were.

‘And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!’ cried Dumbledore.  ‘Everyone pick their favourite tune and off we go!’  He gave his wand an elegant little flick and a long golden ribbon flew from it, twisting itself into words overhead.

‘HOGWARTS, HOGWARTS, HOGGY WARTY HOGWARTS, TEACH US SOMETHING PLEASE,’ bellowed Violet.  She wasn’t even really singing; with such a clamour of voices, she could barely hear herself let alone control what she sounded like.  Sally looked like she would have very much liked to cover her ears but didn’t want to be rude.  Violet decided she liked the Hogwarts school song.  It was sensible.

Finally, they were sent off to bed, following their prefects out of the Great Hall.  Hermione and Tony waved to Violet as the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws headed up the main marble staircase of the Entrance Hall.  The Slytherins headed to a passageway to the stairs’ left and the Hufflepuffs were led into a winding stair to its right.  They descended in ever-widening spirals until they reached a long tunnel with a painting of a bowl of fruit at the end.  The prefects led them to a nook about halfway down the tunnel which was stacked high with barrels.

‘Okay, watch carefully,’ said one of the prefects, a girl named Chloe.  ‘Second row from the bottom, middle barrel.  Tap it exactly as I tap it – _Helga Hufflepuff_ ,’ she said, rapping sharply on the barrel in rhythm with the Founder’s name.  It swung open to reveal a tunnel large enough for two first-years to crawl through at once, or maybe three if Sally was one of them.

‘Got that?’ said Gabriel, shutting the barrel.  ‘Let’s see one of you new kids try it – Justin, how about you?  One-two, one-two-three.  Helga Hufflepuff.’

Justin Finch-something, Violet recalled as he tapped out the rhythm on the barrel and it swung open.

‘Great!  So, don’t tell anyone about it, and remember – it’s in the rhythm of Helga Hufflepuff.  Everyone inside.’  The prefects ushered them into the tunnel in an orderly row before climbing in themselves, pulling the barrel shut behind them.

Violet crawled through the tunnel and emerged blinking in a place full of golden light.  It was a large, round room with thick, fluffy rugs on the wooden floor.  A large fireplace crackled merrily and the windows were high up in the walls.  The common room’s furniture was squashy, well-used and comfortable, all in shades of black and yellow, and everything had brass trimmings.  A number of lamps hung from the ceiling, smokeless and heatless, and the first-years stood murmuring in wonder.  Over the mantelpiece hung a portrait of a beautiful woman in a yellow dress.  She had a broad, cheerful face and held a golden cup in her hands.  From the flowering branches that arched over her hung a banner that read “EX GRATIA” in big Gothic letters.

‘Before you all go to bed, we’ve got a few start-of-term things to get out of the way,’ called Chloe over the din of a lot of people in the same room.  ‘Everyone find somewhere to sit or stand, Professor Sprout should be along in a bit.’

The older students opted to stand or sit on the floor, surrendering most of the chairs to the first-years, which Violet thought was decent of them.  Megan and Leanne crammed themselves into a single armchair, so Violet and Susan each perched on one of the arms while Hannah and Sally sat on throw cushions on the floor next to them.  The first-year boys weren’t so touchy-feely and dispersed among the rest of the furniture.  It was all very cosy and informal; everyone chatted amongst themselves and there were hugs and excited gossiping going on between friends who hadn’t seen each other all summer.  The whole common room gave an air of warmth and comfort.

‘In a hole in the ground there lived a Hufflepuff,’ said Violet to herself and giggled.

‘Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat,’ said an older girl nearby, smiling; ‘it was a Hufflepuff-hole, and that means comfort.’

Violet decided that she liked the Hufflepuffs.

A few minutes later, Professor Sprout appeared.  She was a stout, smiling witch with wild hair and a cheerful manner.  ‘Hello chaps,’ she said cheerfully, looking around at everyone.  ‘Welcome back to our senior students, and to our first-years, welcome to Hogwarts and to Hufflepuff!  I’m Professor Sprout, your Head of House.  I teach Herbology here at Hogwarts, and if you have any trouble at all – not just in class – feel free to come and see me!  My office is up on the first floor.  Now, while you’re here at Hogwarts, your Housemates are going to be your family.  A house is not a home, my mum used to say, and she was quite right – it’s love and kindness and respect that make a home, not walls and a roof.  Hufflepuff House has a legacy to uphold.’  Her gaze swept the common room, making eye contact with everyone.  ‘Remember our motto.  EX GRATIA – by grace.  We’re the House that cares.  We work hard.  We’re loyal, faithful and kind.  We help one another and don’t ask anything in return, and we turn the other cheek when we’re slapped.  We may not always win, but no other House can say that they’ve consistently come second or third or fourth for ten centuries with scrupulous honesty.’  There was some scattered laughter at that.  ‘I will not tolerate any bullying or dishonesty from my cubs.  From the older students I expect kindness to your lowerclassmen; from you firsties I expect nothing less than your absolute best.  For a thousand years, Hufflepuff has been the House that accepts everyone, no matter what, and it’s up to you to make sure legacy’s around to hand on to the next batch of first-years.’

Everyone applauded and Professor Sprout waved her hands, looking pleased and embarrassed at the same time.  ‘Now, the noticeboard over there is used to pin up timetables, school club sign-up lists and announcements, so make sure you pay attention to it.  Anyone caught misusing the noticeboard will be turned into fertiliser and fed to the Venomous Tentacula.  You are not to leave your dormitory after lights out, but even if you do get peckish in the night you are not to leave the common room and tickle the pear in the painting of the bowl of fruit down the way.  Under no circumstances are you to ask the kitchen staff for something to eat.  And you’re not to tell any of the other Houses about what you’re not supposed to do.  Are we clear?’

Everyone tittered.  Violet wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not, but made a mental note to make sure to check the painting out the next time she got hungry at night.

‘Professor,’ said Gabriel, waving.

‘Oh – that’s right.  Everyone, if you should be unable to get hold of me, see one of your Prefects – that’s Gabriel Truman – ‘

‘Hello!’

‘ – Chloe Adams – ‘

‘That’s me.’

‘ – Lester Finch – ‘

‘Hi everyone.’

‘ – Rachel Cohen – ‘

‘Yo.’

‘ – Harriet Duncan – ‘

‘There aren’t any snappy greetings left,’ complained Harriet.

‘ – and David Gupta,’ finished Professor Sprout.  ‘Alright, that’s it I think.  Again, welcome to Hufflepuff, and may your years here be happy ones!  Off to bed!  Girls’ dormitories are to the left, boys’ to the right!’

Everyone began moving toward the two big round doors set into the curved walls.  The one to the girls’ dormitories led to a long corridor with seven rooms behind seven doors.  The one right at the end had a plaque on it saying FIRST YEARS.  Violet and Sally and Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones and the other Hufflepuff girls who she learned were called Megan Jones, Leanne Sharif and Lillian Gray all piled inside and found that their things had been brought up from the train.  It was a round, comfortable room with the seven beds spaced evenly around the walls and polished-brown floorboards.  Tapestries on the walls showed scenes of forests and lords and ladies riding among the trees.  There were enormous four-poster beds with yellow hangings, and the sheets had been turned down like in a fine hotel.  A trapdoor in the centre of the floor led down into a round bathroom with ten toilets and as many marble baths that were sunk into the floor, divided by stalls, and a row of stone sinks with gold-framed mirrors hanging above them.  The tiles were done in a design of green and yellow and golden lamps made the place look warm and friendly in the steam as they turned on the hot, scented water.

Bath time was fun – the girls chatted gaily as they washed: Susan, Lillian and Hannah told stories that their relatives had told them about their days at Hogwarts; Megan taught them all a rugby song about a saucepan; Sally turned out to have a lovely singing voice and the girls from magical families begged her to sing a Muggle song for them so she sang Dance Magic.  And for the benefit of Sally, Megan and Leanne, who were from Muggle families, Violet, her hair tied on top of her head to keep it from getting wet, told the story that Professor McGonagall had told her – of how her parents had died as heroes, and how she had survived an attempt to kill her as a child.

Everyone was rather quiet after that, and Hannah asked, ‘Do you think he’s dead?  You-Know-Who?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Violet honestly.  ‘But if Voldemort was still alive –’ there was a series of gasps, ‘ – then I think he would’ve come after me by now, wouldn’t he?’

‘My aunt is Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,’ said Susan quietly.  ‘She was one of the first people on the scene.  She said they never found his body.’

No one really felt like playing after that, and Violet was sorry she’d brought it up.  They drained their bathtubs and dried themselves off, pulling on their dressing gowns or pyjamas.  Hannah and Susan weren’t looking at her as they climbed the ladder back up into the dormitory, while Sally, Megan and Leanne were looking at her with wonder, having just found out she was famous. 

‘I was worried about coming here,’ said Sally sleepily as they crawled under the covers.  ‘But I think it’ll be alright if I’m with you lot.’

‘Professor Sprout’s nice, isn’t she?’ said Leanne.

‘We’ll be good friends,’ decided Violet, and promptly fell asleep.

 

She woke up early, as usual, the next morning, going down into the bathroom to brush her teeth and change into her uniform.  She dressed with particular care – today was to be the first day of classes.  She even made a peremptory effort at brushing her hair, although it remained as hopelessly tangled as ever, so she simply tied it back.

Climbing up the spiral staircase back into their dormitory, she found that Sally and Susan were up.  Sally looked fresh as a daisy, letting her hair down out of the bun she’d put it in for bedtime; Susan was doing stretches.

‘Morning,’ said Violet happily, bouncing over to her bed to put on her socks and shoes.  ‘Look!  My tie’s yellow!’

‘Oh how nice,’ grumbled Leanne, two beds over.  ‘She’s a _morning person_.’

‘Aren’t you going to brush your hair?’ asked Susan, ignoring the other girl.

‘I did,’ said Violet.

Susan sighed.  ‘Give me ten minutes.’  She rummaged through her trunk and vanished into the bathroom, followed by Sally.  Susan returned twelve minutes later, dressed and neat as a pin, just as Megan and Hannah went down.  They’d been trying unsuccessfully to get Leanne to get out of bed.  Lillian, a pretty girl with bobbed brown hair and grey eyes, was up and yawning.

‘Alright, let’s have a look at your hair,’ said Susan, advancing on Violet with a hairbrush in her hand.  She had the air of a woman with a stick contemplating a carpet she didn’t like.

She started brushing Violet’s hair rather more roughly than Violet felt was necessary.  ‘You’ve got – very thick hair,’ said Susan, sounding puzzled.  ‘Like a – Oh.’

‘What?’ said Violet.  She turned around and saw Susan holding the hairbrush’s handle.  The head had snapped off.  Violet pulled it out of her hair and stared at it.  ‘I’ll buy you a new one,’ she offered feebly.

‘No, it’s fine, I’ve got spares.’  Susan dived into her trunk and came out with a pink bottle which proclaimed itself to be Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion.  ‘My mother gave me this over the summer!  I’ve been waiting for a chance to try it out.’

‘Is it safe?’ said Violet, eyeing the bottle suspiciously.  It looked rather like one of Aunt Petunia’s shampoo bottles, with bubbles and flowers all over it.

‘My mum uses it all the time,’ said Susan, which wasn’t really an answer.  She squirted a little of the potion into her hands and rubbed them together.  She began combing her fingers through Violet’s hair, and when it got a little damp, she got another hairbrush and brushed it again.  The potion felt cold on Violet’s neck and seemed to be evaporating very fast.  The brush slid through her hair smoothly and beautifully, and Violet sprang to her feet, running into the bathroom to check her reflection.  Her dark hair was no longer a thick, unruly mess of tumbled locks.  It fell in soft, smooth waves to her waist.

‘You look great,’ said Susan, coming down the stairs.

‘You look like Jeanne Moreau in _Jules et Jim_ ,’ declared Sally, coming out of her bath stall.

‘I look like my mum,’ said Violet suddenly.  Aunt Petunia had once said that Violet looked like her mother, but Violet had spent ages staring into mirrors with her parents’ wedding photo in one hand and couldn’t see it at all.  She had her father’s hair, though.  Now, however, the wild tangle had been tamed and suddenly she realised that she did indeed look like Lily Potter.

She led the Hufflepuff girls, minus Leanne, to the Great Hall.  Not many people were up yet, although the ceilings in the common room proved to be the only part of it that was above ground; they showed a view of grass and bobbing dandelions.  There weren’t many people in the Great Hall, although Violet saw Hermione sitting by herself down one end of the Gryffindor table.

‘Hey, Hermione!  Come sit with us!’

Hermione looked up, startled.  She had a stack of books next to her; she looked at the older Gryffindors further down the table, as if uncertain if she were allowed.

‘I don’t think we’re supposed to eat at other Houses’ tables,’ murmured Susan uncomfortably.

‘What are they going to do, starve us?’ said Violet as Hermione came over, books under her arm and plate in her hand.  ‘Hermione, this is Lillian, Susan, Hannah, Megan and Sally.  Lillian, Susan, Hannah, Megan and Sally, this is Hermione.’

‘Good morning,’ said Lillian.

‘How do you do,’ said Susan.

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Hannah.

‘Alright?’ said Megan.

‘Hello,’ said Sally.

Hermione slid onto the bench next to Violet.  ‘Hi,’ she said shyly.  ‘Am I allowed to sit here?’

‘Who can say?’ said Violet breezily.  ‘Are you already reading?  We don’t even know what classes we have yet!’

‘Just some revision,’ said Hermione, holding up _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_.  The other book was _Magical Theory_.

‘Oh, my aunt’s in the author’s notes for that one,’ exclaimed Susan.  ‘The writer interviewed her for the chapter called Binding the Dark.  Madam Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.’

‘Oh wow!  You’re related to Madam Bones?  She’s amazing!  Is the story about her and Antonin Dolohov true?  The writer just says that there’s eyewitness accounts...’

Hermione and Susan drifted off into a deep discussion about the Dark Arts while the rest of them ate.  Violet helped herself to scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice and bacon and sausages with cheese inside them.  When Tony came into the Great Hall, she waved him over.  ‘Everyone, this is Tony,’ she said with her mouth full.  ‘Tony, this is everyone.’

‘Hello,’ he said in reply to the chorus of greetings.  ‘Hey, Hermione.  Violet, want to look for the library after lunch?’

‘We’ll eat fast,’ said Violet by way of confirmation.

‘Where’s Draco?  We should tell him too,’ said Hermione.  There were a few more Slytherins at their table by now, but it was still quite early.

‘Whichever of us sees him first tells him, okay?  We have double classes, right?  One of us should see him sooner or later.’

As more students began filtering in, the prefect Chloe stopped to shoo Hermione and Tony away.  ‘Off you trot, kids,’ she said, not unkindly.

‘Why?’ said Violet.  ‘It’s not against the rules, is it?’

‘No, but the teachers like it when everyone sticks to their Houses,’ said Chloe.  ‘Makes us easier to keep after, and besides, we get our timetables this morning so it’s easier if you’re at your own House tables.  Also because I said so,’ she added as an afterthought.

Tony grinned and stole some of Violet’s toast, ignoring her indignant squawk and dodging her attempt to elbow him in the ribs.  Susan promised to lend Hermione her copy of _Blessed are the Just_ , which had been written by her aunt Amelia.  Hermione left her copy of _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ behind for Violet to borrow with a stern admonition that she was not to eat or drink anything near it and that she should bring _The Wind in the Willows_ to lunch.  Chloe sauntered down to the other end of the table to sit with the senior Hufflepuffs.  Megan and Sally started a sword fight with a couple of bread sticks.  Leanne showed up in a terrible mess, obviously still half asleep.  Susan tutted and shuffled over to make room for Leanne between herself and Lillian, and the two girls began to make her look respectable.  She ignored them, eating sedately as they brushed her hair and straightened her clothes.

Eventually, Professor Sprout came down from the High Table to hand out their timetables.  All the first-years had the same timetable – after breakfast they had Charms and Herbology, and then they had lunch and then double Potions.

‘Charms should be fun,’ said Violet cheerfully.  ‘I’m quite good at Charms, I can already do a Levitation Charm and a Wand-Lighting Charm.’  And then, of course, Sally and Megan begged her to show them so she made her fork rise into the air to their applause.

She waved at Draco as she saw him come in and saw Anthony lean across to the Slytherin table, presumably to tell him about their plans.  After breakfast, she and the rest of the Hufflepuff girls went back to their dormitories to fetch their books for Charms and Herbology as well as parchment, quills and ink.  Violet had tried quills and ink over the summer holidays and didn’t care for it at all, so she’d brought a pack of Biros in red, black and blue.

Charms was up on the third floor, so they all trooped back upstairs.  Violet noticed a lot of people seemed to be looking at her, and they’d gotten to the third floor landing before she realised what all the stares and furtive pointing and whispers were about: she was famous.

‘Look, she’s over there.’

‘That’s Violet Potter?  I thought she’d be taller.’

‘Where?’

‘Next to the girl with the pigtails.’

Somehow, it didn’t seem as fun as she’d imagined. She felt awkward and strange, as if she might trip or do something stupid at any moment and they would all see.

To her relief, they bumped into Tony and a group of Ravenclaws on the third floor.  Maybe people wouldn’t notice her if she stayed in a group.

‘Hello Tony,’ said Violet.  ‘Charms?’

‘Yep,’ said Tony brightly.  ‘This is Padma, Terry and Michael.’  Everyone introduced themselves and they set off for classroom 2E.  ‘We met Flitwick last night, he’s Head of Ravenclaw.’

‘Which one was he?’ asked Violet, trying to remember the other teachers at the High Table.

‘The little one,’ said Padma.  ‘Is it okay to call him that?’

‘I’m sure he’s heard worse,’ Violet assured her as they reached the Charms corridor.  ‘I think this is it.’

Inside they found long desks with benches put to them, five rows of them facing the front of the class.  Professor Flitwick was indeed the little one, a tiny man who stood on a stack of books to see over his desk.

‘Welcome, welcome,’ he squeaked.  ‘Take a seat, children!’

Violet made a beeline for the back of the class out of habit, but Tony and Sally tugged on her elbows and dragged her to the front.  Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws began to file in and fill up the desks behind them as they got their books and quills out.

‘Now, children,’ he said when they’d all gotten settled in.  ‘Since this is our first class, we’ll begin with attendance.  When I call out your name, just say “here!” and then we can get onto some real magic.  Abbott, Hannah!’  He went down the list, and when he got to Violet’s name he squeaked in excitement and fell off the pile of books.

‘Professor!’ cried Violet, jumping to her feet in alarm.

Sally gave a squeal of laughter and clapped her hands over her mouth.  Professor Flitwick, however, took it with good grace, laughing as he climbed back onto his books.

‘Here,’ called Violet unnecessarily, making the class giggle.

He finished taking attendance and began his lecture.  ‘Quills out, children, and start taking notes.  Charms are the most diverse and wide-ranging class of magic many of you will ever have occasion to use.  There are two main kinds of charms: enchantments and sorcery, also called object charms and independent charms...’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Professor Flitwick's lecture continues thusly:
> 
> "There are two main kinds of charms: enchantments and sorcery, also called object charms and independent charms. Object charms, as their name suggests, work on objects and alter them in some way. They are differentiated from Transfiguration by their aim: where Transfiguration changes one object into something else, an object charm simply changes its properties or attributes. For example, if I were to change this paperweight into a vase, that would be an example of Transfiguration. But if I were to make it float, or make it change colour, or shrink it, that would be a charm. Independent charms simply produce an effect independent of any object it is working on. For example, a Wand-Lighting Charm produces light, but does not make things glow. An Incendiary Charm produces fire, but does not set things alight. However, independent charms can be directed to produce an effect on objects – if I light my wand, I can use it to shine light on things and if I shoot flames I can use them to set things alight..."


	13. Drinking Deep

" _If thought is the mother_  
 _of all good action,_  
 _Then what is the child_  
 _of plain distraction?_  
 _Think! pay attention!_  
 _Let your mind change!_  
 _Make everyday things_  
 _complicated and strange!_  
 _There are fish to be fried,_  
 _but first to be caught:_  
 _So spread wide the nets_  
 _and get tangled in thought!_ "

Professor Flitwick was a very interesting teacher.  He told them funny anecdotes about his time as a student that gave examples of what he was talking about and kept the whole class in such a good mood that none of them were ever bored.  At one point he asked if any of them could do any charms; Violet, Anthony and Padma all raised their hands.

‘Splendid!’ he said, beaming.  ‘What charms do you know?’

‘I can do a Levitation Charm,’ said Violet.  ‘And a Wand-Lighting Charm.’

‘I can do a Reparo Charm,’ said Tony.

‘I can do Dowsing Charms,’ said Padma, a little shyly.

‘Why don’t we have a demonstration?’ said Professor Flitwick.  ‘Miss Potter, you go first.  Perhaps a Wand-Lighting Charm.’

Violet demonstrated, and then he took out his watch and cracked its glass face on his desk before he had Anthony perform a Reparo Charm on it.  Finally, he conjured a glass of water from the air and applauded when Padma made her wand emit puffs of smoke when she passed her wand over it.

‘You three clearly have a lot of talent,’ he said approvingly.  ‘Five points to Hufflepuff and five each to Ravenclaw for Miss Patil and Mister Goldstein.  Now, don’t be disheartened children; by the time this year is over, I’ll have you doing all those and more!  If you work hard in this class, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be as good as anyone else.  That’s the thing about Charms, my dears; they’re so wide a field of magic that everyone’s bound to find some sort of charm they’re good at.’  When the clock on the wall chimed half past ten, he looked around as if wondering where all the time had gone.

‘End of class already!  Well, we’ll leave it at there for today.  I want you all to read the introductory chapter to Charms in Magical Theory.  I’m very glad to meet you all, and I shall look forward to seeing you over the next seven years!’

They trooped out of the classroom, chattering excitedly.  Everyone was very impressed with their wandwork, and Violet was surrounded by three Ravenclaws who begged her to give them tips.

‘First day and you’re already sucking up and swotting?’ scoffed Zacharias Smith as he swaggered past them.  Violet glared at him, swearing that she’d get him one day.

‘What’s his problem?’ she demanded of Susan.

‘Who, Zacharias?  He’s just not very nice, I think,’ she said vaguely.  ‘We know his family.  My family does, I mean.  They’re a very old and respected wizarding family.  Descended from Helga Hufflepuff, you know.’

‘Just ignore him,’ said Sally from Susan’s other side.  ‘That’s what I always do to people who are nasty.  Mum says I didn’t used to and that’s why I’m not allowed to have scissors anymore.’

They all went down to the Entrance Hall, pausing occasionally to consult a rough map that Padma Patil had drawn of the lower levels of the castle.

They found Professor Sprout waiting for them in the Entrance Hall.  ‘Come along, kids,’ she called.  ‘The greenhouses are just down the way.’  She led them out through the huge main doors and to the right.  A little ways off from the castle were hedges that acted as fences enclosing what looked like herb gardens, and in the midst of these were several greenhouses.

‘Now, while we’re in here you must promise to do exactly as I tell you,’ said Professor Sprout.  ‘That means no putting things in your mouth – no touching things in cabinets – and certainly no going at each other with trowels.  And if I ever catch any of you coming into the greenhouses without permission, I shall feed you to the Venomous Tentacula.’

Violet laughed, but Sally and several of the Ravenclaws looked distinctly nervous.  She supposed a Venomous Tentacula had to be something unpleasant.

Inside, it was warm and damp, and on every shelf and bench stood plants in pots and tubs.  Some were in jars, and there was a whole shelf of tiny trees in clay trays – graceful miniature maples and willows and oaks.

‘I’m Professor Sprout, and as you’re by now aware, I teach Herbology!  Now, since this is your first year, we’re not going to be dealing with any of the very dangerous plants.  Mostly it’ll be magical herbs and fungi with useful properties we’ll be learning about, such as will supplement your Potions classes.  However, we will be handling some poisonous plants, so I meant what I said about putting things in your mouth!  If I tell you that a particular plant is dangerous, I expect you to listen!  Who’s brought their dragonhide gloves?’

Padma and a Ravenclaw boy named Terry raised their hands.  Professor Sprout sighed.

‘In future, always bring your gloves to class, alright?  Fortunately, we’ll not be handling anything dangerous today so you won’t need ‘em, but it’s important to be prepared.  Now who can identify any of the plants on this shelf behind me?’

The lesson continued like that for a little while as Professor Sprout talked about the importance of herbs and fungi in potion-making and as spell ingredients in general.  Then she began teaching them how to put plants in pots, handing out seedlings in cardboard cartons.  She taught them how to layer soil, fertiliser and mulch and prepare the pots for their new occupants.  Toward the end of the class, she had them write their names on the clay pots and put them on an empty shelf.

‘Over the next couple of weeks, you’re to attend to your seedling and after that’s done we’ll see how they’ve grown.  If you’ve done exactly as I’ve told you, you ought to have fine new Alihotsy saplings!  Don’t eat the leaves.  Everyone read the first chapter of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ and I’ll know if you haven’t because I will be quizzing you on Wednesday!’

She let them out of class early to go wash their hands before lunch, and Violet was full of chatter and good cheer.  She’d enjoyed Herbology and the damp greenhouses with their silvery-green gloom and warmth and interesting smells.

‘That was fun,’ said Violet happily as the girls scrubbed their hands clean in one of the ground floor bathrooms.  ‘I wonder why we can’t eat Alihotsy leaves?’

‘They cause hysteria,’ said Padma knowledgeably.  ‘My sister Parvati?  She got into my mum’s Alihotsies when we were seven.  She laughed for three hours.  Mum had to sedate her.’

‘Wow,’ said Sally.  ‘Do you think if we gave some to Zacharias he’d stop being so grumpy?’

The girls all went  off in giggles as they headed for the Great Hall.  ‘Ooh, wait,’ said Violet suddenly.  ‘I need to get something!’  She sped off to the Hufflepuff dormitory and rapped out the rhythm on the correct barrel.  She squirmed through the tunnel into the common room where several Hufflepuff students read or played chess.  Professor Sprout was there too, arranging some flowers on a shelf near the window.

‘Hello dear,’ she called.

‘Hello Professor,’ Violet called back as she hurried into her dormitory.  Dumping her Charms and Herbology books on her bed, she burrowed into her trunk and pulled out _The Wind in the Willows_ , almost running back to the Great Hall and bumping into Draco just inside the door.

‘Draco!’ cried Violet.  ‘Hi!  We haven’t talked since yesterday!  We’re still on for exploring, right?’

‘Right,’ confirmed Draco.  ‘I need to ask you about Sprout and Flitwick.  I need to be sure of how to act around them to make sure they like me.’

That was sneaky, thought Violet.  Almost admirable, really, except that he’d let it slip why he wanted to know.  It said a lot about him, really.  ‘Flitwick’s really fun and interesting, and I think Professor Sprout just wants you to do your best,’ she said, scanning the tables for Hermione.  ‘Hey, have you seen – Oh, there she is!  Hermione!’

Hermione was coming over from the Gryffindor table.  ‘Hello, Violet.  Oh, you brought it!’  Violet handed over the book which Hermione hugged to her chest happily.  ‘We just had Potions.  It was horrible.  He didn’t call on me once!  He spent the entire time asking poor Neville questions even though he didn’t know any of the answers.  Rotten, I call it!  I don’t think it’s very fair of him to single out students who don’t know the answers when I’ve learned all our set books by heart!  We’re at a critical learning stage, he has to engage us, that’s what my mum says.  Anyway, let’s have lunch and then we’ll go find the library!  We only have an hour for lunch, so let’s meet on the Great Hall steps in fifteen minutes, alright?’

She bustled off again.  Violet and Draco exchanged a look.

‘What’s a critical learning stage?’ asked Violet.

‘I think it’s an exam you have to take on the Continent,’ said Draco vaguely.  ‘I’ll tell Tony to meet us in ten minutes if I see him.’

Violet bolted down her lunch, eager to get going and ignoring Sally’s repeated protests that she was going to make herself sick.

‘Lemme be,’ mumbled Violet, shovelling eggs and half a pork pie into her mouth.  ‘Passa frui’ pladder?’  The fame she’d earned with the ice cream at dinner last night had not yet faded, and some of her housemates watched her with interest.

‘Violet the Vacuum,’ said Zacharias Smith nastily from across the table.  Violet gave him a dirty look.

‘Hey, that’s clever!’ laughed a third-year.  ‘Violet the Vacuum!  Sounds like a superhero name.  Able to eat a universe of dinners and not burst!’

There was some good-natured chuckling at this, and Violet rolled her eyes as she swallowed the eggs and pie.  She coughed and thumped herself on the chest, nodding her thanks when Sally thoughtfully poured her a goblet of water.  She sipped it for a while, allowing her stomach to settle – she’d tried pumpkin juice the night before and found it wasn’t at all to her taste.  Then she grabbed a peach, an apple and a bunch of grapes off the nearby fruit platter and began eating those, ten minutes later dropping a peach stone, a stem (she’d eaten the whole apple, core and all) and a grape stalk onto her plate.

‘I’m off,’ she said cheerfully.  ‘I’ll see you in our next class!  What was it, Potions?’

‘Yes.  Where are you going?’ demanded Susan.

‘Exploring!’ said Violet brightly.  ‘Oh, watch out for the Potions professor, apparently he likes calling on people who don’t know the answers.’  And with that, she trotted off.

She found Tony chatting with Professor Dumbledore at the foot of the stairs.  ‘...replaced by a nasty horde of Fire Crabs,’ Professor Dumbledore was saying absently.  ‘Oh, hello Miss Potter.’

‘Hello, sir,’ said Violet, suddenly rather shy.  ‘It’s nice to see you again.’

‘And you, Miss Potter.  How was your summer?’

‘I ate all the chocolate at once,’ said Violet proudly, and Professor Dumbledore chuckled.

‘A fair feat indeed.  If you’ll excuse me, I think I smell lunch.  I’ll leave you in the care of Mr Goldstein.  Good day, children!’

He trotted off, humming to himself.

‘Do you think he’s a bit mad?’ asked Violet uncertainly.

‘I don’t know, but I certainly intend to go hunting for that room on the sixth floor that’s full of Chocolate Frogs sometimes and Fire Crabs at other times,’ said Tony cheerfully.  ‘Oh, there’s Hermione.’

She was coming out of the Great Hall with her bag over one shoulder, talking animatedly with Draco about goblin rebellions.

‘Hermione thinks that goblins are oppressed,’ said Draco, rolling his eyes, but it was clear he wasn’t really being nasty about it.

‘Goblins aren’t oppressed,’ chuckled Tony.  ‘They’re too powerful.  Come on, I think the library’s on the third floor.  Or maybe the fourth.’

‘Both,’ said Violet and Hermione in unison.

It was slow going, heading up to the third floor.  Violet had read all about Hogwarts’ secret passages and hidden places, and insisted on stopping to pry at every mirror and peer behind every tapestry they passed.  Hermione grew impatient while Draco was simply bemused, like he was wondering why she cared so much, but Tony took to it with great enthusiasm.  They found a passageway hidden behind a tapestry and one door hidden under a staircase that revealed a slide that went off into the darkness.  Violet was all for jumping down, but Hermione convinced her that they’d miss their chance to find the library.

‘Hey, give me a boost,’ said Tony.  ‘There’s a weird crack on that bust and I want to see if it’s a hidden switch.’

Violet was already cupping her hands when Hermione sighed in exasperation, whipped out her wand and said, ‘ _Trudere_.’  A pulse of blue light shone around the marble head and it tilted back for a moment as if it were on a hinge.  A rather dusty box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans fell into Violet’s hands.

‘That was amazing!’ she crowed and opened the box.  Hermione promptly took them away from her, and she stared at her friend, outraged.

‘Hey!’ said Tony, just as annoyed.

‘These are thirty years old,’ said Hermione with a look of deep revulsion as she checked the manufacture date.

‘Gimme,’ said Violet mulishly, but Hermione held them out of her reach, passing them to Draco, who tossed them out an arrow slit.

‘Honestly, Violet,’ he chided.  ‘Mother went on and on all summer about how polite and sweet you are.  I don’t think she knows what she’s on about.  If she could see you going about after decades-old sweets...’

Violet stuck her tongue out at them and marched up the stairs, ignoring them completely.  On the third floor they found a pair of enormous double doors with a brass plate fixed to the lintel that said LIBRARY.  The right hand door had a picture of a woman on it with a tall, plumed helmet with an owl on her shoulder and a shield at her feet.  Violet immediately recognised her as the Greek goddess Athena.  The other one was a handsome young man carrying a bow and arrows.

‘Athena and Apollo,’ said Hermione softly, and pushed the doors open.

Violet walked forward, almost dizzy with delight.

The Hogwarts library was everything a library ought to be.  The floors were worn, polished wooden boards; the high ceiling, two storeys up, was vaulted and echoing.  Large windows let in the light, and every shelf was laden with the most beautiful books.  Some were obviously very new while others were crumbling and ancient with strange, old-fashioned lettering on the spines.  The shelves themselves were ornately carved works of art made out of oak, engraved with images of ravens and flowering vines and suns and moons.  The maze of shelves spread out across the vast room and up two floors, topped with astrological globes and busts of famous witches and wizards.  Students drifted among the shelves or sat at desks with stacks of books next to them, all under the watchful eye of a thin, vulture-like woman peering at them all as if they were about to pick up the books and run off with them.

‘Librarian,’ said Violet in hushed, reverent tones, and made a beeline straight for her.  Librarians were mythic creatures in her mind, kind, smiling folk who would point you to the children’s books and not tell you off if you stood on a footstool to reach the grown-up books.  Draco followed close in her wake while Hermione and Tony ran over to the nearest bookshelf and began pulling out books.  ‘Excuse me?’

The woman turned and gave Violet a truly dreadful look.  ‘Yes?’ she said, sounding as if she’d swallowed a pineapple whole.  Her nametag said MADAM PINCE.

‘Do you have books by Terry Pratchett?’ Violet asked.  She’d liked _Truckers_ , and there’d been a big list of other books Terry Pratchett had written in the back of the book.

In an instant, Madam Pince’s entire demeanour changed.  ‘Oh!  I haven’t had a child come in here asking for Muggle literature in the longest time!’

‘Violet!’ hissed Draco, embarrassed, elbowing her in the ribs.  She ignored him.

‘So you do have Pratchett?’ said Violet eagerly.

‘Oh yes, we have all of Pratchett to date,’ said Madam Pince, now smiling benignly down upon them.  ‘Of course, we can’t keep the Muggle books with all the others, the board of governors wouldn’t allow it, but we’ve got a little room down the back where we keep them in case anyone asks after it – oh, I haven’t had a student looking for Muggle books in a year or more...’

‘Why didn’t the board of governors want you to keep all the books together?’ asked Violet, frowning as she followed Madam Pince to the front desk.  ‘What if someone didn’t know to ask you about it and then didn’t realise for years and years that there were Muggle books at all?

‘It’s not right,’ said Draco unexpectedly, and Violet and Madam Pince turned to look at him.  ‘This is a magical school, and it isn’t right that Muggle books are kept where just anyone could get at them.’

Madam Pince sniffed, which could mean anything.  Violet asked, ‘Why?’

Draco grew rather flustered.  ‘Well – well obviously they’re just – Well, it’s just not right, is it?  We’re magical people, we oughtn’t to have anything to do with Muggle things.’

Violet narrowed her eyes.  ‘What if students from Muggle families want to read them?’ she asked.

‘Well, Muggle-born students ought to learn to leave those sorts of things behind,’ said Draco, a lot more confidently.  ‘If they’re to be real witches and wizards, I mean.  They’re lucky just to get into Hogwarts, really, but the sort that won’t leave Muggle things to the Muggles – I don’t think they should let them in.’

Violet stopped walking and turned to him, hands on her hips.  ‘My mum was a Muggle-born,’ she said coldly.  ‘Voldemort killed her because of it.’  She had the satisfaction of seeing Draco flinch before she turned on her heel and hurried after Madam Pince.  Draco didn’t follow her.

Madam Pince led her behind the green leather-topped desk with its ledgers and folders and stacks of papers through a door that was concealed by a bead curtain.  Behind it lay a pale imitation of the Hogwarts library, much more like the libraries that Violet had seen in the Muggle world.  The room was bare stone and the shelves were of plain pine, but they were thickly laden with books.

‘Pratchett is over here,’ said Madam Pince kindly, leading her over to the Fiction section.  ‘I need to get back to work, I’m afraid, but if you want to borrow any books, just bring them to the front desk.  Do you know how the shelving system works?’

‘Yes, under P,’ said Violet happily.  ‘Oh, thank you!’

‘You like to read, my dear?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Violet.  ‘I love to read.’

‘What do you like to read?’

Violet smiled at her, looking around at the shelves.  ‘Everything.’

 

They were almost late for their next classes, Hermione, Tony and Violet all lining up at the desk with stacks of books to check out.  Hermione and Tony were discussing Roman magical history but quieted down when Madam Pince glared at them as she made notes of the books they were checking out and told them that they were due back in two weeks.  Violet’s books, however, including two by Pratchett and three  heavy tomes called _A History of Wizarding Britain in the Twentieth Century, Let’s Learn Latin!_ and _The Young Enchantress: Useful Spells for Girls of Quality_ , were checked out with a smile and a friendly pat on the shoulder.

‘You feel free to pop around any time, dear.  My office is right next door, and if things are slow between classes, come around for a cup of tea and a bit of a chin-wag.’

‘Thank you, Madam Pince,’ said Violet happily with a few books under each arm.  Tony, who’d only gotten one volume on serial killers, very gallantly offered to carry her books for her and she relinquished a few to him.

The moment they were out of the library, however, Hermione cried, ‘Oh my God, there’s five minutes until our next class!’ and ran for the stairs.

‘I need to get to Ravenclaw Tower!’ said Tony.  ‘Sorry – I’ll meet you at Potions class!’

‘Where is it?’ asked Violet as she took her books back from him.

‘In the dungeons!’ Tony called as he ran after Hermione.

Violet hurried downstairs to the Hufflepuff cellar, adding the library books to the pile Potions, Herbology and Hermione-owned books already on her bed before jamming her scales and dragonskin gloves into her cauldron and slinging her bag over her shoulder.  She ran to the Entrance Hall, asked a passing second-year Slytherin where the dungeons were, and ran down the stairs on the opposite side of the main staircase.

She skidded to a halt, gasping for breath and clanking just as the students were going into the classroom.  Mopping her forehead, she collapsed into a seat next between Sally and Susan. Tony came clattering into the classroom just as the teacher shut the door, giving him a glare. Violet turned in her seat and gave Tony a thumbs up, which he returned with a grin, pushing his sweaty hair out of his face.

The Potions teacher, Professor Snape, didn’t look very nice.  He was tall and thin and menacing, with greasy hair and a hooked nose and dark eyes.  Looking at him, Violet felt rather sorry for him – he looked someone who had a lot to deal with.

‘Put away your wands,’ he snapped at some of the students who had them out on their desks, clearly hoping for another lesson like Flitwick’s.  ‘You are here to learn the mysteries of potion-making, and there is little need for wand-waving and incantations in this class.  Here, you will study the Art, the noble science built on the wisdom of thousands who came before you...’

The class was hanging on his every word; even though he spoke softly, no one had trouble hearing him.  They were all silent.  There was a strange intensity in the way he moved and spoke, his dark eyes sweeping the room and glittering.  He understood what he was talking about, and what was more, he loved it.  Violet could tell.  He really did care about potions.

‘Cures, curses, alchemy, the arts of change and transubstantiation – I can teach you to raise wonders and splendour from the most ordinary of beginnings... Unless, of course, you are anything like the imbeciles who usually blunder through this class.’

Violet wanted to giggle but held it in.  In front of her, Padma Patil was writing down everything Professor Snape was saying.

He began by taking attendance, and when he got to Violet’s name, his eyes lingered upon her for a long moment.  She stared right back and gave him a smile.  He didn’t smile back, but simply went on with the register.

Finally, he stood and flicked his wand at the blackboard.  A piece of chalk rose into the air and wrote PROFESSOR SNAPE in large, curling letters.  ‘I am your Potions master, Professor Snape.  You will address me as such, or “Sir”.  I give you fair warning: I will teach you as well as I can, and that shall be well indeed; if you do not deliver excellence in your classwork, I shall consider it an insult.’

Everyone squared their shoulders a little as if in response to a challenge.

‘Miss Potter,’ he said suddenly with the air of a bird of prey swooping down on a vole.  ‘Tell me, what are the four main ingredients of Ptolemy’s Panacea?’

Violet had to think for a moment.  Ptolemy’s Panacea, Ptolemy’s Panacea... She remembered hunting for the ingredients with some of her friends over the summer.  ‘Dittany, willow bark, moly and mandrake root, sir.’

‘Correct,’ said Professor Snape, although he still looked a little forbidding.  ‘Take five points for Hufflepuff...’

He began firing questions into the class, pausing to snap at them to write down the answers.  Violet was thankful that she’d brought ballpoint pens when she saw Padma’s quill beginning to splutter with the speed of her writing.

‘Miss Potter, name the Hermetic text that forms the foundation for all of Western alchemy.’

‘The Smaragdine Tablet, sir,’ said Violet, still writing furiously.  She didn’t see his small smile.

‘Correct.  Take another five points...’

Eventually, he stopped quizzing them and began to expound on the basics of potion-making.  ‘You will hear this field of study called many things over the course of your lives – Potions, the Great Work, the Art, alchemy, leechcraft – but in the end, they all mean the same thing.  The creation of something wondrous from something utterly mundane.  How is it accomplished?  The foolish and the blind say that the magic is in the materials, in what you put in.’ Professor Snape’s lip curled.  ‘Were that so, the meanest Muggle could make the deadliest potions if they had the right books.  No, the ingredients help... but the magic comes from the potion-maker.  It is a ritual.  Potions require a steady mind and a skilled hand, for you will find that you will never attain such fine results working from lists and recipes without understanding and attending to the principles of the craft.’

His voice grew soft and the entire class leaned forward.  Violet found herself holding her breath.  Professor Snape’s eyes seemed almost to glow.

‘If you are attentive and patient and diligent, you will learn to reap wonders.  I can teach you how to brew fame, bottle glory, and even stopper death...’

Afterward, he separated them into pairs to brew a potion to cure boils, sweeping around the classroom like an oversized bat, snapping out corrections or sharply telling people what they were doing wrong. Violet read and reread the instructions on the board three times over before doing anything, and when he swept by her and Sally, he simply gave them a curt nod. Violet breathed out a sigh of relief. She would have hated to be on his bad side.

He was just so _cool_.


	14. Lessons

 " _This could possibly be the best day ever,_  
 _And the forecast says that tomorrow will likely be a million and six times better!_  
 _So make every second count, jump up, jump in and seize the day,_  
 _And let's make sure that in every single possible way_  
 _Today is gonna be a great day!_ "

After Potions class, Violet, Hermione, Tony and Draco met in the Entrance Hall.  There was still a couple of hours until dinner, so they decided to explore the grounds.

Draco, Violet noticed, wouldn’t meet her eyes.  Fine.  Let him carry on being a prat.

They went down the main steps of the castle.  The grounds were flooded with warm golden late afternoon light and all the shadows were lengthening, although there was still quite a lot of daylight left.  Other students were filtering into the grounds to catch the last bit of sunlight after classes.

‘Where to first?’ asked Violet.  She’d brought her copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ , and was looking at the map in the preface.  ‘Down to the lake?  Or should we go see the Whomping Willow?’

‘How about to the Forest?’ said Tony.

‘We’re not allowed, Professor Dumbledore said,’ snapped Hermione.

‘We won’t actually go in,’ Tony said eagerly.  ‘Just near it.  I’d like to see a Forbidden Forest.  We don’t have many forests in Israel.’

‘You have to tell me what Jewish magic is like sometime,’ exclaimed Hermione as they began walking rather aimlessly.  Violet noticed that Anthony was headed in the general direction of the Forest, but in a meandering, casual sort of way that made it seem like pure happenstance.  Hermione, too absorbed in his descriptions of Israeli magical scholarship and Judaic spellcasting to notice, was successfully circumvented.

‘Violet?’ said Draco in a small voice as they lagged a little behind the other two.

‘Noticed me at last, have you?’ said Violet nastily.

Draco flinched, but pressed on.  ‘Don’t be mad at me.  What I said... I didn’t mean it about you or your mum.’

‘Just all the other Muggle-born witches and wizards,’ snapped Violet.  ‘You’re just saying sorry to me because I was around to get mad at you.’

Draco drew himself up, grey eyes flaring.  ‘If you’d been taught the _proper_ – ’

‘Girls, shut up, you’re both pretty,’ called Tony from up ahead.

‘Look,’ said Draco in a low voice.  ‘I don’t want you mad at me.  Can we just forget about it?’

‘Fine,’ said Violet.  ‘Friends?’

‘Friends.’

Whatever they said, thought Violet, it was still a little awkward.

The forest loomed up ahead, huge and dark and forbidding.  Tony pulled up short in the middle of a spiel on exorcisms and Hermione grabbed his arm in sudden alarm, as if she’d only just realised how close they were.

‘It’s so pretty,’ breathed Violet.  The trees were ancient, their branches mossy and the leaves just starting to turn.  The shadowed dales were pierced with shafts of golden sunlight, making it all look mysterious and beautiful.

‘I heard there’s werewolves in there,’ said Draco, hanging back warily as if he expected one to come bursting out at any moment.

‘Well, it’s daytime,’ said Tony reasonably.

He and Violet exchanged a look, and an unspoken agreement passed between them.  Together, they went to get a closer look.  The forest ended very abruptly, in a jagged line of trees that gave way suddenly to grass.  It would be perfectly possible to peer under the branches without actually going into the forest, reasoned Violet.

‘Oi!  You kids, clear off!’

Hermione gave a squeak of fright and tried to dive behind Draco.  ‘I told you we’d get in trouble!’  Violet squinted into the shadows where something was moving as everyone else drew back in some alarm.  Even if it wasn’t a werewolf, being caught by a teacher lurking around the Forbidden Forest held just as much appeal.

Hagrid emerged from the trees in his enormous moleskin coat, looking irritable.  ‘Yer not allowed into the Forbidden Forest, didn’t ye listen ter – Gallopin’ gargoyles.’  He froze to the spot.  His dark eyes searched Violet’s face, and his enormous beard moved as he smiled, making his eyes crinkle, and suddenly, despite his immense size, wild hair and crazy-man beard, he looked friendly, even kind.  ‘Violet Potter?’

‘Yes?’ she said slowly.  She was still getting used to people knowing who she was.

‘Yer bigger than the last time I saw ye – yer look just like yer mum when she was your age,’ he said, and his eyes looked a little wet.  ‘Ye’ve got yer dad’s hair, though.’

‘You knew my parents?’ said Violet, her friends forgotten for the moment.

‘Yeah, when they were at school here,’ said Hagrid.  ‘My name’s Rubeus Hagrid, Hagrid to me friends.  Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts.’

‘How do you do,’ said Violet politely.  ‘This is Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy and Anthony Goldstein.’

‘Pleased ter meet yer,’ said Hagrid with a nod.  ‘I know you get Friday afternoons off, come roun’ fer tea if ye like sometime.  I’ll tell ye a bit abou’ yer parents.  Yer friends can come too if they like.’  This was said with a smile for the other three who were keeping well back.  Being only first-years and very small, they were not inclined to trust creatures too much larger than them, be they senior students or giants.

‘I’d love to,’ said Violet happily.  ‘Although I think it’s almost dinnertime.’

‘Run along,’ chuckled Hagrid.  ‘I’ll see ye ‘round.  And keep away from the Forest!’

‘He’s _scary_!’ whispered Hermione as they trudged back to the castle.

‘He’s sort of a savage,’ Draco informed her loftily.  ‘He lives in a hut on the school grounds – and sometimes he tries to do magic and ends up setting it on fire.’

‘I think he’s nice,’ said Violet, frowning.  ‘Which is more than what you’re being, Draco.’  Draco went quiet after that.

 

Violet sat down to dinner with the other Hufflepuffs that evening full of chatter.  She’d learned so much and everything was so interesting and the teachers were so cool and oh wasn’t magic grand?  She only ceased in her babbling to shovel food into her mouth and once she’d swallowed she started up again.  Satsu, Cedric and Chloe sat across from her, Susan and Sally, all five of them spellbound.

‘...and apparently sixth and seventh year students can take Alchemy but they only run the class if there’s enough interest and you need to take Arithmancy as an OWL and a NEWT and apparently it’s really hard but it seems so interesting and – Oh, I went back to the library after classes – the library, Sally, you have to see the library! – and there’s a whole section on alchemy and it’s a lot like Potions really – Professor Snape’s pretty cool, isn’t he?  He looks like he could blast you as soon as look at you – Oh, have you met the gamekeeper, Hagrid?  He’s wonderful, he says he knew my mum –’ She paused to cram a mass of mashed potatoes roughly the size of a baby’s head into her mouth.

‘It’s like watching a building get imploded on the telly,’ Chloe said to Cedric, sotto voce.  ‘Epic destruction with a running commentary.’

‘Cheers,’ said Violet brightly with her mouth full.  She gave a massive swallow, hacked up her steak into manageable pieces and devoured them before reaching for the shepherd’s pie.

‘You’re going to make yourself sick,’ said Sally anxiously, plucking at Violet’s elbow.

Violet snorted into her stew.  She’d watched Aunt Petunia feed Dudley for years without doing him much harm.

 

Violet was, in fact, quite splendidly sick after dinner.  It was the crawl through the barrel to get to their dormitory that did it.  Violet had been feeling stuffed to bursting, and crawling on her hands and knees must have knocked something loose inside her.  As soon as she was standing in the common room, she swallowed, hard, pressed both hands to her mouth, and ran for the dormitory bathroom.

She barely made it down in time before half her dinner came up onto the tiled floors.  Sally and Susan came down after her, calling out in concern.  Sally recoiled with an exclamation of shock and ran back upstairs, yelling for help.

Violet was hunched over on the floor, retching and trying desperately to choke it back.  The prickly-hot feeling of humiliation flooded her – around Dudley and his friends, being ill or crying or just not paying attention meant laughing and pointing – and she waited for the jeering, for the entire House to crowd on the bathroom steps to laugh at stupid Baby Potter sicking up in the bathroom.

Instead, all she got was Susan rubbing her soothingly on the back murmuring soothingly.  ‘There there... come on, you’ll be fine... you just ate too much and too fast, that’s all... Sally did tell you you’d make yourself sick...’

She felt someone take her arm and help her up off the floor over to the sink where she washed her mouth out and croaked, ‘Sorry.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s overeaten,’ smiled the prefect Chloe kindly.  ‘ _Scourgify_.’  She flicked her wand and cleaned up Violet’s puddle of vomit.  ‘We’re right next to the kitchens, remember?  Come on, Violet.  You’ll be okay.  You just need to slow down at dinner!  At Hogwarts, you may skip a meal every now and then, but you’re not going to starve, I guarantee you that.’

Violet’s head snapped up and appalled mortification flooded her at the mention of the word “starve”.  She had no desire whatsoever to discuss her private miseries with these people she’d known two days.  She started to leave the bathroom, shoving past the prefect, but Chloe caught her by the wrist and stopped her.

Chloe met her gaze, steady and calm.  ‘Do you think you’re the only one who knows what it is to be hungry?’ she said quietly.

 

Violet was very quiet and went to bed early, pulling the yellow curtains around her bed shut.  Outside, in the dormitory, she could hear the other first-year girls going in and out, murmuring, asking Sally or Susan if she was alright.

She wasn’t entirely certain what had happened, but Chloe... She had the strangest sense that Chloe had seen locked cupboards and hungry times of her own.

Violet curled up under the covers.  The curtains were comfortingly claustrophobic.  They reminded her of her cupboard under the stairs, except with plentiful sheets and soft pillows and a feather mattress she lay in undreamed-of comfort.  The cupboard might have been dark and frightening when she didn’t know if she would be let out, but it had also been a safe place.  Aunt Petunia would never have dirtied her twinset by putting so much as a finger through the doorway, and Uncle Vernon couldn’t get at her if she was locked inside.  She wasn’t in danger of a thumping here, of course, but she felt vulnerable all the same.  She didn’t want to have to talk to these girls with their concern and their kindness and have them know why she always fell on her food like she was starving.

It seemed like only the next moment that she awoke, but she knew it must be hours and hours later.  The lamps had been doused, and everything was silent.  The dormitory was full of the soft sound of sleepers’ breathing.

Violet crept out of bed and went down into the bathroom for a shower.  She got dressed and neatened up as well as she could; the potion Susan had used on her hair was losing effect and her hair was getting wild again.

The clock on the mantelpiece in the common room said that it was half past three in the morning.  She’d slept for nearly eight hours.  Putting her hair up in a ponytail, she crept out into the common room where she saw Cedric Diggory dozing at one of the tables, slumped over an essay.  She’d always heard that you weren’t supposed to wake dreamers, and he was muttering about Switching Spells so she crept past him and out into the corridor.

It was very, very quiet.  The entire castle was still asleep, although the lanterns that lit the cellar were still burning brightly.  The painting of the bowl of fruit sat proudly at the far end of the tunnel, gleaming in its gilded frame.

Squaring her shoulders, Violet walked over to it, her pretty shoes tapping on the stone.  She was wearing the black leather ones with the pearls on the clasps.  Normally, what with Hogwarts’ long corridors and hundreds of staircases, she would wear the comfortable, sensible loafers, but her pretty clothes felt like a lucky charm, like nothing could be too terrible if it happened while she was wearing dainty Mary Jane pumps.

Now, what had Professor Sprout said?  Tickle the pear... She reached out and did so; it squirmed and giggled and turned into a large green door handle.  Turning it, she pushed the painting in and stepped through the doorway.

Within was a vast chamber the exact size and shape of the Great Hall which Violet calculated must be directly above.  It was a good deal more plain, without House banners or tapestries, but with four long tables matching the four House tables high above.  All along the walls were stoves and ovens and sinks, long counters and cupboards and every other sort of kitchen necessity you could think of.  It made Violet think of pictures she’d seen in fairytale books of old ladies’ cottages, with bundles of dried herbs and bags of garlic and strings of onion hanging from nails, and little earthenware pots and great cauldrons of soup.

It was also filled with about a hundred little things with enormous eyes and ears, wearing tea-towels and staring at her in shock.

‘Um – hello,’ she said uncertainly.

‘The young mistress does us great honour!’ squeaked one of them, and suddenly there were a dozen crowding around her talking in high, squeaking voices.

‘May we take the young mistress’s cloak?’

‘Would the young mistress like some tea?’

‘We will fetch the young mistress a chair, please sit down!’

She was ushered over to the Hufflepuff table and seated at a tall stool at which point most of the creatures bowed so low their foreheads almost touched the floor, backing away from her respectfully.

‘How may we help the young mistress?’ squeaked one of the little creatures.  They looked a little like Christmas elves, thought Violet.

‘I was just hoping to get some breakfast,’ she said.  ‘If it isn’t too much trouble.’

‘Oh no, young mistress, no trouble at all,’ said her little attendant.  ‘We are being here to serve!  And we are getting up early to light the fires and begin the breakfast.  Does the young mistress want anything in particular?’

‘I’d like some toast, please,’ said Violet.  ‘With real butter, and jam.  And some eggs and bacon.  And I’ll have that tea if there’s some around.’

It was brought to her in minutes, an entire breakfast tray floating over to her.  The eggs and bacon were still sizzling and the toast was perfectly browned.  Violet chewed meditatively and thoroughly on a rasher of bacon, scared into eating slowly by last night’s display.

 ‘Sorry,’ she said to the creature who was bringing her food, ‘I didn’t even ask your name.’

‘I am Blodwen, mistress,’ said the creature, bowing.  ‘Blodwen the house-elf.’

‘Right,’ said Violet.  ‘And I’m Violet.  Violet the, um, Potter.’

‘Violet Potter?!’ shrieked Blodwen suddenly, making Violet jump and upset her tea.  The kitchen was suddenly full of gasps and clatters as house-elves dropped things or knocked them over in shock.  ‘Violet Potter is visiting in our kitchen?  Oh no, oh no!  Violet Potter cannot be eating like this!’

The breakfast tray was whisked away in an instant as the house-elves were whipped into a frenzy of activity.  Another tray clattered down onto the table, dishes and silverware rattling.  She barely had time to take in what was on it before another thudded down nearby and another.  There were tiny birds, so beautifully roasted on skewers that she thought she might eat one whole, bones and all.  There were fruits she’d only ever read about – figs, persimmons, papayas – and others she’d never even heard of.  There were foods she couldn’t put a name to, but they all looked and smelled entrancingly wonderful.

‘Er – Blodwen, it’s not that I’m not grateful, but what’s with the royal treatment?’ asked Violet blankly.

‘You is Violet Potter!’ cried Blodwen.  ‘You conquered the Dark Lord!’

A murmur ran through the crowd of elves.

‘It was dark in the old days,’ said Blodwen.  ‘All the magical brethren suffered.  We house-elves were treated like vermin, mistress.  Not here at Hogwarts, of course, but to have magic, and not be human... They hated us.  But after you defeated He Who Must Not Be Named... everything has changed.  All the world owes you a debt, Violet Potter.’

‘All the world,’ echoed the house-elves, ‘all the world.’

‘We show our favour, Mistress,’ said Blodwen, and Violet could hear the capital letter and squirmed uncomfortably.

And so Violet feasted on roasted songbirds that had been gorged their whole lives on figs and roasted with spices and honey, foie gras and quince on toast, olives from the Cyclades, cheeses from France and caviar from the Baltic Sea.  They brought her dishes of strange sauces to try and fragrant breads with herbs and honey and meltingly delicious pastries and cups of tea from places like Japan and India.

A few hours later, Violet was sitting down to breakfast at the Hufflepuff table in the Great Hall as hot rolls and coffee began appearing, _Magical Theory_ propped up against a pitcher of orange juice in front of her for her to read as she ate toast.

As long as she didn’t eat too fast, she could still eat a lot.  Right?

Students were beginning to trickle into the Great Hall.  Draco was among them and headed for Hufflepuff, sitting down next to Violet.  ‘Good morning,’ he said, pouring himself some tea.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Violet happily.  ‘Pass us the jam?’

‘I want to explore the towers,’ said Draco without preamble.  ‘Your dormitory is in the cellar and mine’s in the dungeons, we’ll never get to see the towers at this rate.  Gryffindor and Ravenclaw are in towers, you want to get Goldstein and Granger to show us around at lunch?’

‘Alright,’ said Violet.  ‘I’ve got double History of Magic first thing today with you Slytherin lot.  Sit together?’

‘Alright.  Hey, pass me those eggs.’

And, their quarrel forgotten, they ate together until people began to trickle into the Great Hall and Gabriel shooed Draco back to the Slytherin table.

 

By the end of the week, Violet had settled into a routine.  She would rise early and have breakfast in the kitchens with the house-elves – she managed to convince them to tone down the breakfasts to something more regular – and then she’d head into the Great Hall to read and eat a second breakfast.  Hermione and Draco were early risers as well, so sometimes they would explore the dungeons or the upper floors before classes began.  Once or twice Draco brought some of the other first-year Slytherin boys along – first two boys named Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, and a dark, lovely boy named Blaise Zabini who had a haughty manner that topped Draco’s by half.  Violet had the unpleasant feeling that Draco was trying to show her off, to make them jealous that he was friends with Famous Violet Potter, and relieved her discomfort by being completely beastly to them.  Crabbe and Goyle were too slow to appreciate her barbs, but Zabini’s eyebrows shot up when, after hearing him talk about his mother, she smiled sweetly and said, ‘Seven husbands with seven fortunes?  How lovely for you, Borgia – I mean, Blaise.’

It might have been her imagination, but his manner toward her grew marginally more cordial for the rest of the morning.  Draco stopped bringing friends after Violet remarked that he must be popular among the Slytherins, at which point she realised that he’d been showing off for her, trying to let her see just how much pull he had in the Slytherin first-year boys’ dormitory.

Facepalming, she found, did not nearly express the level of exasperation she wanted to convey.  However, since Violet was appropriately acknowledging his political power and his House had recognised his close friendship with the Girl Who Lived, Draco eased up on his grandstanding and subsequently became much more bearable.

Hermione liked to explore the upper levels because the dungeons were, as she said, “creepy”.  Draco bemoaned the stairs, but Hermione loved to talk to the moving portraits and look at the busts and tapestries.  Violet learned a lot about the secrets and history of Hogwarts from talking to the paintings; she found that many of them were indescribably bored and generally ignored by the other students, which meant that like all old people they loved to talk and tell stories.  There was a hundred generations’ worth of stories in those portraits.  The walls had ears, indeed.  Hermione and Anthony became regular adventurers of everything above the fourth floor (which the school in general tended to view as Gryffindor and Ravenclaw territory), and the four of them occasionally got scolded by passing ghosts, teachers or prefects for trying to unlock doors or upsetting the paintings by looking for secret passages behind them.  Violet found two hidden compartments behind paintings and both had decades-old sweets inside them which the other three conspired to take away from her as soon as she picked them up.  The towers were also a marvel, for Hogwarts had a great many of them, although most of them had teachers’ offices or personal rooms in them.

The lessons were hard but very interesting.  Professor McGonagall, as Violet predicted, didn’t favour her at all and during the second Transfiguration lesson told her off for passing a note to Hannah.  She was very fair, however, and always made sure to congratulate students who did well – Padma Patil, Lillian Gray, Tony and Violet all managed to make the correct alterations to the matchsticks they were meant to be Transfiguring – and she awarded them each five points.  The homework wasn’t too much, but it was only their first week, after all – Professor McGonagall wanted five hundred words on Switching Spells, Professor Flitwick wanted them to give a three-minute talk about one of the subsets of charms listed in _Magical Theory_.  Violet, who had never really been challenged by the work at school because she always had to be sure not to do better than Dudley, was finally allowed to work hard and keep up.  She threw herself into her studies with single-minded passion, determined to make Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore proud.  She would be a great witch like her mother.

Professor Snape was a strange teacher.  He seemed to ignore her and favour her by turns, and she hadn’t the foggiest notion why.  One moment he seemed to like her, telling her the answers to questions when she didn’t know them where with other students he would simply snap, and the next he wouldn’t even look at her.  She didn’t know what to make of it.  She did want him to like her, just like she wanted all her teachers to like her – they decided what marks she got, it was only smart – but she couldn’t even be sure he knew that she was the same girl from lesson to lesson.  The classes were interesting, though – she’d always liked the thought of making potions, and tried it in her dormitory for practise.  The resulting ash cloud had sent her, Sally, Lillian, Hannah and Leanne running for the common room, coughing.  She’d lost ten points from Hufflepuff for that, but everyone except Lillian agreed that it was totally worth it.

History of Magic was a class she’d been looking forward to because her textbook for it was so very interesting, but Professor Binns, who was a ghost, was enough to bore her to tears.  As he didn’t take attendance and the first thing he’d had them write down was the entire year’s syllabus, she started skipping History of Magic classes to hide out in the library and read up on the topics herself.  Madam Pince, in whom she’d found a lifelong friend, turned a blind eye and warned her when prefects or teachers were about.  She read _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ and _Modern Magical History_ in two days each.  She hadn’t liked _Modern Magical History_ much – it was sentimental and soppy, talking about how innocence and purity had made an end of darkness and horror.  It was, she told Madam Pince, extremely dull and a little stupid.  Madam Pince explained to her that the word for this was “insipid”.  The other book was much better.  It read like a horror story, painting pictures of dark times and vile deeds, and how Dark magic had flourished up until the Enlightenment when people had begun thinking that maybe it wasn’t okay to torture entire villages because the mayor was rude to you.  Violet shivered with a sense of pleasant dread as she read the book before bedtime with its descriptions of the terrible things wizards had done to other people.  The book called Lord Voldemort’s defeat “the death-knell of the Dark Arts in our time” and made out that it was his own fault for going after a baby and his wand had backfired or something.

By lunchtime on Friday, she was flagging a little.  So much energy had gone into this first week that she felt she couldn’t possibly keep it up.

‘See, that’s what comes of dragging us hither and thither all around the castle at every spare moment,’ said Draco knowledgeably when she complained to her friends as they sat under a tree by the lake.  Violet had asked the house-elves for a packed picnic lunch and they were enjoying the sunshine.  ‘Exercise is uncivilised.’

‘Yes, we all know that you think any kind of exertion is a sign of bad breeding,’ teased Hermione, and he good-naturedly stuck his tongue out at her.

‘The problem is that Hogwarts just has too many secrets,’ said Tony from the low branch of the tree he was sitting on.  He was reading _Hogwarts: A History_ for the third time.  ‘We could go exploring every single day from now until we graduate and we’d never find them all.’

‘I don’t think that’s a problem, really,’ said Violet happily.  She stretched out on the grass with a sandwich in either hand.  ‘Means there’ll always be something to find.  Maybe I can come back and be a teacher after I graduate and go exploring that way.’

‘You’d be a terrible teacher,’ said Draco.

‘Look who’s talking,’ drawled Violet.

After lunch they ventured down to the lake and amused themselves by throwing leftovers into the water for the giant squid.  ‘Do you think there’s merpeople down there?’ asked Draco.  ‘Mother says that there was a rumour going around when she was here that Dumbledore let a colony of merpeople live in the Black Lake.’

‘Yes, it’s in _Hogwarts: A History_ ,’ said Hermione.  ‘Chapter seven – ’

‘ _Denizens of the Adjacent Environs_ ,’ Violet recited along with her.  ‘I’d love to see a mermaid.’

‘They’re not pretty,’ said Tony, pulling a face.  ‘Nice singers, though.’

‘They’re not even really people,’ added Draco, but Violet wasn’t listening.  She was kneeling by the lake’s edge, peering into the water from the rocky shore.  It was deep and clear, although she couldn’t see the bottom.  Drawing in a deep breath, she stuck her head underwater and yelled, ‘HELLO MERPEOPLE!’ in a flurry of bubbles before Draco and Tony had her by the elbows and were dragging her back ashore.

‘Are you crazy?’ yelled Draco.

‘You could have fallen in and drowned!’ shrieked Hermione.

‘You looked like a lunatic,’ said Tony, although he looked like he was about to laugh.  The other two were still telling her off, so she took off her hair ribbon and shook herself off all over them just to annoy them.

‘I didn’t know you spoke Mermish,’ commented Tony as Hermione helped her put her hair up to stop it from dripping all over her uniform.

‘I don’t,’ said Violet cheerfully.

‘Anyone can speak Mermish,’ said Draco.  ‘All you have to do is point and make burbling noises.’

‘I’m going over to Hagrid’s later,’ Violet remarked.  ‘I’d like to hear about my parents.’  She ran her fingers through her hair, making Hermione tut disapprovingly as it tumbled down around her face again, making her robes all wet.  ‘You wanna come?’

‘No thank you,’ said Draco with a well-bred little sniff.  ‘I promised Pansy I’d help her with her Charms homework.’

‘Is that the same Charms homework I helped you with?’ said Hermione sternly.  Draco mumbled something noncommittal.

‘Can I come?’ asked Tony.  ‘I want to take Care of Magical Creatures in third year, and I bet he knows all about the animals and things that live around Hogwarts.’

‘Yeah, he did say you could.  Hermione, coming?’

‘Well, I was going to read up on alchemists, but I suppose I can do that after dinner.’

‘That means you get to take this back to the kitchens,’ said Violet gleefully, taking the picnic basket off Tony and thrusting it into Draco’s arms.

‘I don’t know where the kitchens are,’ complained Draco.

‘No, you don’t,’ agreed Violet cheerfully and did a cartwheel.

 

A little while and several grass stains later, Violet, Tony and Hermione were heading down to Hagrid’s house.  It was a sort of cabin out in the grounds, and from the lake’s shore they walked along the toward it along the forest’s margin.  The castle loomed over the lake from its cliff behind them, reflected almost perfectly in the still, dark water.  Draco had gone stumping back to the school in a huff with the picnic basket, and Violet was getting hungry again.  She hoped Hagird would serve tea.

They unlatched Hagrid’s garden gate and walked through his vegetable patch.  Violet stood on tiptoe to tap on the heavy iron knocker.

The door opened a crack, and Hagrid’s hairy, smiling face appeared in it.  ‘Hello Violet!  An’ ye’ve brought yer friends – Tony an’...?’

‘Hermione Granger, sir,’ said Hermione politely.

‘It’s jus’ Hagrid, Hermione,’ he said graciously.  ‘Come on in.’

Inside, the hut was very rustic and cosy, with wooden walls and rough pine furniture.  Everything was hung from hooks on the ceiling or on the walls, but little touches like the sunflowers in the vase on the table and the patchwork quilt on the enormous bed cave it a cosy, homey feel.  An enormous boarhound was dozing under the table, but woke up as they came in.  He began to bark excitedly and Violet gave a coo of delight and ran to him, scratching under his chin and petting his darling, ugly head.

‘That’s Fang, don’t mind ‘im none,’ said Hagrid comfortably, pottering about in the kitchen.  ‘Take a seat, kids.’  He set out a plate of cakes and some sandwiches before putting the kettle on to boil.  ‘I’m righ’ pleased yeh came ter see me, Violet – I knew yer dad and yer mum when they were students, an’ later, before they – before they – ’ His eyes filled with tears and he blew his nose on an enormous handkerchief with a sound like a foghorn.  ‘Sorry, but they were that nice – better people yeh couldn’t find.’

‘What was my mum like?’ asked Violet curiously.  ‘My aunt says I look like her.’

‘That yeh do,’ said Hagrid with a smile.  ‘But yeh’ve got yer dad’s hair.  Ah, she was a firebrand, yer mum.  The second she saw someone bein’ mistreated, she was on ‘er feet.  Didn’t matter if they were Slytherins or anythin’ – she was that fierce.  Very lippy, too.  Always talkin’ back to older students, teachers she didn’t like, but only when she was in a mood.  Yer dad, now he was a troublemaker...’

And Violet, Tony and Hermione sat in Hagrid’s dim, cosy hut with its scents of wood and dried foods and they ate rock cakes and stoat sandwiches talked about Violet’s parents.  Eventually, the conversation turned to how they were doing at school and Hagrid was thoroughly charmed by Hermione, saying to Violet and Tony in a giant’s-rumble stage whisper, ‘Watch out fer this one, brains like hers, she’ll be yer next Minister!’ and making Hermione blush magenta.  It turned out that Hagrid even remembered Tony’s father as “the kid who got a month’s suspension fer releasin’ Nifflers into the Great Hall at lunch”, making Tony crow that he would hold this over his dad forever.

Eventually, the clock over his fireplace chimed four o’clock, and Hagrid sent them back up to the castle.  Violet had a cake in one hand and a sandwich in the other and she waved to Hagrid with the cake as they began their walk back up to the castle.

‘That was lovely,’ sighed Hermione.  ‘Isn’t he nice?  He looks scary, but he’s really very nice.’

‘I wonder how he got so big,’ said Tony thoughtfully.  ‘Maybe he accidentally drank a bottle of Skele-Gro or something when he was a kid...’

‘How good are these sandwiches, though?’ said Violet with her mouth full.

 

The next day was a Saturday.  They’d all made arrangements to meet outside the library after breakfast and spend an hour doing homework and then explore some more.  Hermione agreed to explore the dungeons with them as long as they did it in the morning, and Tony wanted to have a look at some of the advanced students’ classrooms on the upper floors.

Violet ate an extra big breakfast in the kitchens so she wouldn’t have to eat as much at her second breakfast so she could go to the library early to read before the others got there.  Draco caught up with her at the library doors however, out of breath and frantic.

‘Hi, Draco,’ said Violet.  ‘Did you bring your copy of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_?  Because I left mine on my bed and I don’t want to go all the way back down to the cellars to get it – ’

‘Never mind that now,’ hissed Draco.  ‘You’ll never believe what I found out!’

‘They’ve figured out how to get that poker out of your bum?’ inquired Violet, shifting the books in her arms.

‘Ha ha, very mature.  No, it’s about Granger!  You know Pansy Parkinson, in Slytherin?  She told me!’

‘What about her?’

‘You’ll never believe this – she’s Muggle-born!  Her parents are Muggle Healers who see to people's mouths - dentists, they're called!’

Violet stared at him for a long moment.  ‘You mean you didn’t know?’ she said, nonplussed.

‘You mean you _did_ know?’ demanded Draco.  ‘Why didn’t you say something?  Why’d you let me go around thinking she was a pure-blood?’

‘Pure-blood?  What’s that?’

‘You know – from a decent wizarding family.  With magical parents and grandparents and ancestors!  You could have told me.  I can’t mix with people like her!’

Violet kept her voice steady, although her hands were white-knuckled on the books.  ‘How could you not know her parents are Muggles?’

‘Because she seems so clever!’ hissed Draco.  ‘She knows all our classes and lessons and she knows about magical history, I thought she must be really smart, she must come from a really good family, but the whole time she’s just a – a Muggle who read things out of books!’

‘Oh, like I’m half Muggle?’ said Violet angrily.

‘Yes – I mean – no, your mum was a witch, same as anyone,’ said Draco, suddenly nervous.

‘So is Hermione.  She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.  You just don’t like that her parents are Muggles but she’s still smarter than _you_.’  Violet’s books tumbled to the floor and she gave Draco a shove.  He backed up, looking shocked.  There was a terrible roaring in her ears.  ‘You’re just jealous!  It’s rotten of you, thinking someone’s not as good just because their family’s not like yours!  She does come from a good family, just not a magical one!  They might not be witches and wizards, but I bet they’re as nice and smart as anything, and you’re being horrible about them!  Hermione’s been so nice to you, helping you with your homework!  What right have you to be mean about her family?’

‘Because she’s NOT A REAL WITCH!’ bellowed Draco.

Violet slapped him.

Draco stared at her in shock, and Violet scooped up her books, turned on her heel and stomped into the library.

Later, Tony and Hermione arrived to find her sitting stiffly at one of the library desks, staring blindly at a shut book.

‘Violet?’ said Tony uncertainly.

‘Where’s Draco?’ demanded Hermione.  ‘Honestly, he’s always late for everything.’

‘He’s not coming,’ said Violet, her voice sounding strange and distant.  What if Draco never wanted to talk to her again?  She’d never had many friends, and being popular at Hogwarts didn’t mean that alienating them was something to be done lightly.

‘Why not?’ sighed Hermione.

‘Just drop it, okay?’ said Violet sharply.  ‘Can we get started on Herbology please?’


	15. "You remind me very much of your father, Miss Potter."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The troll's in this one!

_Speak gently! – It is better far_  
 _To rule by love than fear --_  
 _Speak gently – let not harsh words mar_  
 _The good we might do here!_

Draco Malfoy was in disgrace.

His altercation with Violet had been seen by quite a few people, happening right outside the library as it had, and by lunchtime on Sunday word had spread through the school that not only was Violet Potter a bit of a spitfire with an excellent arm, but that he had deeply offended her.  This alienated most of the Hufflepuff first-years, with the possible exception of Zacharias Smith, who was heard to loudly remark that Violet ought to be suspended for striking another student, but nobody paid him any attention.  Hermione and Tony, of course, demanded an explanation.  Tony in particular was fuming at the alleged insult to Violet’s honour, and they were raring to go off and shout Draco into submission, and so Violet was forced to tell them what had really happened.

Tony was outraged, but Hermione seemed more confused than hurt.  ‘I don’t understand.  He thinks I’m not a real witch?’

‘Because your family aren’t witches and wizards,’ said Violet sullenly, still sulky over being dragged off behind the greenhouses for questioning.  ‘It wasn’t just that, it’s... He made out like your family isn’t as good or as clever as anyone else’s, just because your parents are Muggles.’

Hermione blinked.  ‘Well that’s silly.  They’re dentists.  They have degrees and everything.’

‘Voldemort killed people with Muggle parents,’ said Violet, mostly to herself.  ‘I read about it.  He was a wizard supremacist.  He hated Muggles and thought that wizards ought to rule them just because we’ve got magic.  My mum’s parents were Muggles, and he killed her.  Draco shouldn’t have said those things.’

They were silent for a little while after that.  Violet moodily pulled at a clump of grass.

‘So,’ said Tony suddenly.  ‘We’re not talking to him until he says he’s sorry.  Agreed?’

‘Right,’ said Violet.  ‘And if he says anything like that again, we’ll smack him silly.’

And so the exclusive little quartet of friends became a trio, and tales filtered into Ravenclaw that Draco Malfoy bought into the rubbish that everyone’s pureblood supremacist nan spouted when she’d had too much to drink.  Hermione was too well-mannered to gossip, but the Gryffindors found out on their own that Draco Malfoy was no longer part of the in crowd. It had been during a Gryffindor-Slytherin double Potions lesson when Blaise Zabini and Pansy Parkinson moved apart at their table to deny Draco a spot there, and Millicent Bulstrode put her bag next to her to stop Draco from sitting down, and so on along the Slytherin side of the classroom until he’d been forced to sit at the very back to avoid having to share a table with Neville Longbottom, who was famously a target for Snape’s ill temper.  Draco, who’d based much of his prestige among his peers on his close friendship with the famous Violet Potter, suddenly found his credit among the Slytherins plummeting and even his surname couldn’t keep them from sneering at him.  Hermione, who’d garnered a sort of admiring envy for both her cleverness in class and her close friendships with Violet and the cute boys from Ravenclaw and Slytherin, became cast as a sort of wronged heroine which won her the sympathy of fellow Gryffindor girls Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil.  She seemed annoyed and faintly bemused with them, and they seemed to think that it was all a kind of very fine melodrama that she had been wronged by someone so handsome.

‘They’re so... silly,’ complained Hermione to Tony and Violet the Wednesday afternoon following the incident as the three of them sat on the stone floor around a bubbling cauldron.  ‘I mean, they’re nice and all, but they never want to talk about school or anything serious.  They just giggle a lot.’  Class was finished for the day and they were in the dungeons in an open cell that they’d found.  It had a sort of large man-shaped iron box in the corner that none of them could open, not even when Hermione tried spelling it open, but it was the only open cell they’d seen.  They were practising the Universal Nostrum potion which they were going to be tested on in the next lesson; the three of them had their essays on its composition laid out on the floor and an array of potion ingredients was set up neatly around them.

‘Leanne and Lillian are a bit like that,’ remarked Violet, adding a few blind worms’ stings to the cauldron.  ‘Not about being silly, but they’re giggly.  Susan says she wants to learn a permanent silencing charm so they won’t keep us all up with their laughing all night, especially poor Sally.  She’s not doing very well in class – she hasn’t been doing any of her homework, not even the reading.  I keep offering to help her with it but she just runs away whenever I bring it up.’

‘The Ravenclaws have a tutoring program for Muggle-born students who have trouble ajdusting,’ said Tony.  ‘Maybe she could come see one of them?’

‘I just don’t know how to get her to admit she’s having trouble,’ sighed Violet.  ‘I don’t want to make her angry with me, so I’m too worried to talk to Professor Sprout about it.  Are those the frogs’ toes?’

‘We just need one, I think,’ said Hermione.  ‘What do you have for the next ingredient?’

‘Mummy dust,’ said Tony, checking his essay.  ‘I get so nervous in Potions class, Professor Snape’s a demon...’

‘Oh, he’s not that bad,’ said Violet.

‘Well, not to you, he practically _adores_ you...’

This, thought Violet, was not quite fair; Professor Snape did not adore her by any stretch of the imagination.  It was hard to imagine him adoring anyone.  He was always snappish and bad-tempered and tried to find something to pick on with everyone’s work.  He had a habit of calling on people who weren’t raising their hands, just to be nasty, and jumping on the tiniest errors in their answers.  On the other hand, Violet noticed he was just as impatient and sharp with her, but she also noticed that he didn’t sneer at her when she didn’t know the answers and hardly ever took points from Hufflepuff on her account.  He also had a habit of singling her out in class and telling her she was doing things wrong which she thought was rotten of him until she realised that he was correcting her work.  There’d been enough accidents in class thus far that Violet knew she didn’t want to add the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire.

‘I think this is almost done,’ said Hermione.  ‘It just needs to cool, and then we can strain it out.’  The Universal Nostrum would be useful to keep around; it was a remedy for all sorts of minor ailments, from hay fever to headaches.

‘Want to go practice Charms by the lake before dinner?’ asked Violet as she rummaged in her bag for the strainer and decanter she’d borrowed from the kitchen.  ‘I want to try more Movement Charms.  I’ve got Levitation down, but every time I try to pull something towards me I end up hitting myself in the face...’

Violet had decided she loved magic.  It was hardly like schoolwork at all.

 

The next morning, they had flying lessons.  This was something Violet had been looking forward to all summer.  To be a witch was to fly around on a broom and she fully intended to live up to the stereotype.  She’d heard all about Quidditch from Susan Bones who was mad for it, and Hermione had gotten a book out of the library called _Quidditch Through the Ages_ , which was very interesting indeed, and Violet wondered if she might try out for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team next year.

After breakfast, she showed up on the green in front of the castle in her cloak and hat, which she’d secured with a bit of ribbon tied under her chin to keep it from blowing off her head in case they went up high.  People gave her odd looks as they went outside after breakfast, but she didn’t care.  Today she was going to fly on a broom, and she was going to look the part.

Madam Hooch, the flying instructor, was an uncomfortably pointy-looking woman with a brisk manner that reminded Violet of Professor Sprout.  ‘Welcome to your first flying lesson,’ she said when they were all assembled next to brooms laid out on the ground.  Violet was standing between Tony and Sally, both of whom looked distinctly nervous.  ‘I give you fair warning: there’s to be no fooling about in the air.  Flying is safe if you keep your head about you and follow all the rules, and I’ll not have anyone dropping out of the sky because they were being silly or showing off.  Is that understood?’

‘Yes, Madam Hooch,’ they chorused.

‘Very good.  Now, I want you all to put your right hands out over your brooms and say “Up”.’

‘Up!’ said Violet, and her broom flew into her hand.  Not everyone’s did; Tony’s got halfway before falling out of the air, while Sally’s remained still.  Finally, when everyone had their brooms in their hands, Madam Hooch showed them the proper way to mount them.  She walked up and down the line, correcting grips and elevation.  Violet felt a strange softness under her backside, like a cushion of air where she was to sit.  She supposed the brooms must have been charmed or else they would be very uncomfortable.

‘Now, when I blow this whistle, I want you to kick off from the ground, hard.  Hover for a moment, then touch back down.  Miss Potter, do you intend to keep your hat and cloak on all lesson?’

‘Yes, Madam Hooch,’ said Violet.  ‘I get easily sunburned.’

‘Oh?  You might ask Professor Sprout for an infusion of murtlap and aloe, it’s what I use when refereeing Quidditch matches, and hatpins will serve you better than a ribbon under your chin.  Right, three, two, one – ’

Violet, a bit eager to get aloft, took off a moment before Madam Hooch blew the whistle.  She rose into the air ahead of the rest of the class, and there was a moment of vertigo as she wobbled, but then as the ground dropped away, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles...

The Black Lake was glittering away to the south, and beyond it was the forest, dark and forbidding and stretching off into the distance.  She continued to rise and could see Hagrid’s hut and the Quidditch pitch.  Instinctively, she leaned forward slightly and tugged the broom handle, and turned in a lazy arc toward the castle.  Hogwarts’ many spires and turrets rose into the sky, and she wondered how it would be if she flew among them, kicking the weathervanes around and tapping on the windows.  She soared toward the nearest turret, angling upward slightly so she could fly _straight into Madam Hooch._

Violet shrieked in shock and swerved as the teacher suddenly rose up in front of her, frowning like a thunderstorm.  Leaning down on her broom, Violet shot under her, the top of her hat tickling Madam Hooch’s broom bristles.  She kept low, almost flat along the broom handle, gripping it with both hands and zoomed straight at the tower wall before pulling up at the last second.  Between one moment and the next she went from horizontal to completely vertical, flying parallel up the tower wall.  The wind was rushing in her ears and her heart was thudding in her chest so hard she could feel it in her throat.  Her hair streamed behind her from under her hat, and her eyes were narrowed against the wind.  She could hear Madam Hooch yelling at her to stop, but Violet shot off over the castle, over the courtyard where people pointed and gasped.  She zigzagged among the castle’s spires, weaving in and out and looping under covered walkways.  She soared high over the Astronomy Tower where Professor Dumbledore seemed to be taking tea, and with the wind whipping at her cloak and her hair, Violet Potter threw back her head and _cackled_.

It was a good cackle, long and shrieking, an eldritch squall of ancient, lunatic laughter bubbling from a throat that had pronounced the vilest of curses and foretold the evilest of fates.  However, stopping to cackle meant that Madam Hooch had time to catch up.

‘VIOLET POTTER, YOU LAND THAT BROOM THIS INSTANT!’

Violet reluctantly leaned forward on her broom handle and alighted on top of the Astronomy Tower, mere feet from Professor Dumbledore.  Her legs were a little wobbly and she almost stumbled, clutching a crenel for support.  Professor Dumbledore was on his feet in an instant, steadying her.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said gratefully.

‘Oh, don’t thank me yet, Miss Potter,’ he said mildly as Madam Hooch landed nearby, looking furious.  ‘After all, I am preventing you from running away.’

‘Miss Potter, I have never seen such an outrageous display of showboating and reckless flying from a first-year student in all my time at Hogwarts!’ she raged.  ‘That was an exceedingly dangerous stunt, not to mention a complete lack of respect for me and the rest of your class!  Twenty points from Hufflepuff and a detention this Friday!  And don’t think that you will be taking any more flying lessons, young lady!  I shall write a letter to your guardians and speak to your Head of House and see that you spend every flying lesson for the next term in the library!  What were you thinking?’

‘That it was wonderful!’ cried Violet, still thrilled by her broomstick ride.  ‘Oh, Madam Hooch, that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life!  I’ve never felt like that before!  I loved it!’

Madam Hooch appeared unsure of how to deal with this.  ‘Yes, well, it was a very foolish thing to do, and I am _extremely_ disappointed in you.  Nonetheless, it was an extraordinary display of skill.  You clearly have enormous talent.  I recommend you try out for your House Quidditch team next year... and ten points to Hufflepuff for those daring aerial acrobatics.  Now, hop back on your broom, and we’ll rejoin the others.’

Professor Dumbledore, who’d been sitting on the low stone wall with a book and a teacup, smiled at her and waved as she flew away after Madam Hooch.

 

At dinner that night, Violet was the talk of the table.   Everyone wanted to hear about what it’d been like, zooming off over the castle in hot pursuit.  The story had spread around the school as well, via students who’d seen her from windows and the courtyard.  She’d gotten a stern talking-to from Professor Sprout at lunch, but all anyone else seemed to know was that Violet was a bit of a madwoman.  The middle students seemed to think that she was just a daft firstie who’d let the rush of flying for the first time get to her head, but enough people persisted in tales of her daring trick-flying that Violet found herself begged for details by the other first-years and the butt of good-natured jokes by the sixth and seventh-years.  The Great Hall was positively abuzz with talk of Violet Potter and her madcap antics.

Zacharias Smith, who’d seated himself down one end of the table, far away from Violet and her friends, was loudly complaining about Muggle-born students and their complete lack of respect for teachers, school rules, Hogwarts itself and, it seemed, all of Wizarding Britain.  No one was paying him much attention, but Violet wanted to hit him.  Draco, too, seemed to be pontificating over on the Slytherin table, but Violet cared less than nothing for anything _he_ said.

‘I did _not_ get into this much trouble when I was a first-year,’ said Chloe, grinning broadly as she sat down opposite Violet and Sally.  ‘I swear, it’s like every lot of you has more fun than the last.’

‘Hogwarts has been around for nearly a thousand years, Professor Binns said,’ Sally pointed out reasonably.  ‘According to your theory, we ought to be robbing banks and swapping the Eiffel Tower for a giant pudding.’

‘Sally, don’t go giving Violet ideas,’ ordered Susan sternly from Sally’s other side, and Chloe roared with laughter.

Well, it was far too late for _that_.  Sally’s talk of bank robberies had given Violet an idea.  If she was to spend the rest of this term’s flying lessons aground, then she was simply going to have to find a way to fly without lessons.  She was going to be damned if she would spend the rest of the term with her feet on the ground.

That night, the entire dormitory crowded on and around Violet’s bed, beseeching her in whispers to tell the tale of her daring flight again and again.  Violet basked in their attention and held it with the dramatic rise and fall of her voice, the bend and sway of her body, her manner at times hushed and fervent and at others feverishly impassioned.  She’d never been so attended to before.  No one had ever really wanted to listen to what she had to say, and now here were more friends than she could ever remember having, begging her to tell them about this _really cool_ thing she’d done.  Under their scrutiny, what had been a short chase soon cut short became a violent aerial battle involving drawn wands and several vicious birds of prey, and the girls went to bed that night with as good a bedtime story as any ringing in their ears.

 

The next day at lunch, Violet was sitting with _The Young Enchantress_ propped up against an empty upturned jug, reading as she ate.  It was a very interesting book; if you read it one way, it was full of charms for curling your hair or hiding blemishes or whitening teeth, but if you turned it upside-down and read it backwards, it was full of spells for opening locks and finding lost things and performing first aid.  It seemed that its writers really had intended the book to be full of useful spells for young witches.  She was reading the section on makeup; she’d never worn any, but some of the older girls did, and she wondered when it might be okay for her to start.

 _Makeup is more than a luxury and frivolity.  The lore of lipstick and rouge is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists.  Cosmetics are an extension of the will.  This is why men paint themselves when they go into battle.  When you line your eyes, when you paint your lips, when you powder your cheeks, you say,_ You will not deny me. _Say these things and the world listens, reader.  Because your magic is as strong as an arm.  You are_ never _denied._

They never learned about magic like that in class, thought Violet, turning a page and dunking a roll in her soup before transferring it to her mouth whole.  Magic was all wand movements and rote-learned words and strict procedure, adding and mixing and boiling and decanting.  It was wonderful, amazing beyond words, but it was nothing like the wild, frightening, lovely mysteries in storybooks.  Perhaps magic like that didn’t really exist; perhaps it had been invented by Muggles who knew nothing whatever about real magic.  The writer of _The Young Enchantress_ seemed to believe in such magic, though: the book was forever talking about the importance of purpose and strength of will, and how magic was only as strong as its caster, and how the greatest of all witches and wizards were the ones who believed, absolutely and completely, in what they were doing.

_Of this magic, we can tell you only the least details, for to tell you more would make you an extension of our will, and it is yours that is at issue.  But we will say to you: Blue is for cruel bargains; green is for daring what you ought not; violet is for brute force.  We will say to you: Coral coaxes; pink insists; red compels..._

‘Violet!’ cried Hermione, coming over to the Hufflepuff table in a flurry of wild hair and books.  Hermione, Violet had noticed, had two modes of behaviour: either she was constantly in a hurry without enough arms or time to get everything done, or she was completely lost in a book.

‘Hey, Hermione,’ said Violet absently.  She wondered if she might ask one of the older Hufflepuff girls to teach her how to wear makeup, one of the grand ladies aged fifteen and sixteen who rolled up their skirts at the waist and smoked between classes with their heads out the windows.  ‘Do you know anything about makeup?’

‘What?  No, I’m too young to wear makeup.’

Just as she’d thought, then; there was an age limit after all.  ‘What’s so urgent, then?’

‘We just had our flying lesson, the Slytherin-Gryffindor morning class,’ said Hermione.  ‘So Draco was there, and you know Neville Longbottom?’

‘Which one’s he?’ asked Violet, not looking up from her book.

‘Um, the one with the toad.’

‘Right.’

‘Anyway, his grandmother sent him a thing called a Remembrall and he had a flying accident today – ’

‘Oh, like me.’

‘You didn’t have a flying accident, Tony told me all about it, you were just being silly,’ snapped Hermione.  ‘Stop interrupting!  Anyway, he dropped it when he fell off his broom and Draco grabbed it and when Ron Weasley – ’

‘He’s the ginger, right?’

‘Yes, that’s the one.  When Ron Weasley tried to make him give it back, they got into a broomstick chase, it was awful, and Ron got in awful trouble.’

‘But Draco didn’t?’

‘No, he got back to ground before Professor McGonagall came out...’

‘Typical,’ grumbled Violet.  ‘I guess it would’ve been too much to hope that he’d fall off and break something.’

‘And the Remembrall got broken in the end anyway, just like Neville’s wrist, so it was a disaster all around.  Ron got detention on Saturday, though.  Draco was so nasty about Neville, it was awful!  He’s been like that a lot lately.  I think he’s trying to impress the other Slytherins.’

Violet peered over people’s heads at the Gryffindor table.  ‘Let’s invite Neville to have afternoon tea with us after class.  We can fuss over his wrist, and it’ll drive Draco mad.’

 

It was Hallowe’en before any of them spoke to Draco again.  Time seemed to go rushing by in great leaps and bounds.  Violet was always busy; for the first time in her life,   Sally continued to refuse to do any homework whatsoever, resulting in detentions and letters sent home to her parents.  Tony and Neville became thick as thieves after discovering a mutual passion for Herbology.

‘We’ve got greenhouses at home,’ said Neville late one afternoon as they went hunting for herbs and plants behind the Hogwarts greenhouses.  There was always a little magic leaking into the ground around the greenhouses, and you got bluebells in brilliant scarlet and dandelions that glowed in the dark.  ‘My gran wins prizes for her roses.’

‘Oh yeah, I read about that in Herbology Quarterly,’ said Tony.  ‘Rosa Magdalena, they’re called.’

‘Prize-winning roses, isn’t that a bit Muggle?’ asked Hermione, digging a clump of snowdrops up by its roots.  The flowers were shiny and oddly brittle, the blossoms clinking against each other as she pulled them up.  ‘I’ve got an aunt who grows roses for competitions.  I’d’ve thought witches would grow, I don’t know, poisoned apples or something.’

‘Oh, I’m not allowed in the Vepenumarium,’ said Neville virtuously.  ‘Gran says there’s things in there that could really kill a person.’

‘Rosa Magdalena is a magical strain of rose,’ Tony told Hermione and Violet as they transferred the individual flowers to glass vials.  ‘They’re treated with charms and potions to become basically like miniature wands for as long as they’re blooming.  They produce weak Cheering Charms so anyone around them feels happier.  They’re really good presents for sick people.’

‘It’s a pity we can’t come out here at night,’ remarked Hermione.  ‘I bet there’s all kinds of night-blooming plants we’re missing.’

‘Well, why can’t we?’ asked Violet suddenly.  ‘Let’s go anyway.  Maybe we can break into the broom shed while we’re at it.’

‘No,’ said Hermione in a dreadful voice while Neville looked terrified.

Neville was nice, but he was a little too timid for Violet’s adventures.  He was too frightened to go into the dungeons and refused point-blank to find a way onto the roof.  Violet kept pushing, trying to get him to come out of his shell, but the only result was that he started avoiding her.  Violet would see him talking to Tony and go over to them, only for Neville to flee as soon as politeness allowed.  Of course, being an eleven-year-old boy, he had gained an inordinate amount of regard from his peers for his association with the cleverest and most famous girls in their year, and he’d found a firm friend and defender in Ron Weasley, and so Violet felt justified in feeling very pleased with herself.  Still, it was a little hurtful.

‘You scare him,’ said Hermione one afternoon as they dangled their toes in the lake.  ‘It’s like you’re always running off to do things and see things and you don’t care what happens.  It’s scary to me too, but I like you more, I guess.’

‘He gets along pretty well with Tony.’

‘Well, Tony’s a bit calmer than you,’ said Hermione diplomatically.  ‘Not so likely to hijack a school broom.  Twice.’

The Great Incident was sparked off by Hermione.  She had only had second-hand accounts of how rotten Draco had been about her, and despite Violet’s repeated protestations that he ought to be shunned at all costs, she insisted on going to talk to him at breakfast.

‘He’s not going to listen,’ said Violet.  ‘He’s just going to say something nasty and ignore you.  We shouldn’t even let him _think_ that we want him back.’

‘He’s a racist,’ said Tony.  ‘Saying things like he said, they would’ve thrown him out of my old school.  And then my mother would eat him.’

‘I don’t think he’s kosher,’ Hermione said loftily.  ‘Look, Draco liked me well enough before he found out my parents are dentists, and I’m sure he’ll see that it’s silly if we just give him a chance.  Mum says that being confrontational rarely solves problems and you’ve got to let people feel like there’s a way out that isn’t punitive.  I’m sure we just won’t talk about it again, and we’ll all be happier.’

Tony and Violet came with her as she approached the Slytherin table.  Violet held _The Young Enchantress_ ready to hit anyone who tried anything funny.  The senior Slytherins were very particular about who they allowed to approach them, she’d heard.

‘Hello, Draco!’ said Hermione, forcing a bright, cheery tone.  ‘We’re going to go exploring the Muggle classrooms on the upper levels.  Did you know they used to teach dancing and elocution here?  Why don’t you come?’

Perhaps she shouldn’t have put her hand on his shoulder.  Perhaps she shouldn’t have suggested going to look at the Muggle classrooms.  Perhaps they shouldn’t have gone at breakfast, when Draco was sitting with Blaise and Crabbe and Goyle, reviving his enfeebled esteem among the Slytherins.  But whatever it was that they shouldn’t have done, Draco shouldn’t have replied the way he did.

‘Like I’d go anywhere with you, you dirty little Mudblood,’ he sneered, shrugging off her hand.  ‘You shouldn’t even be at this school.  Figures you’d go looking for the Muggle classrooms.’

Tony gasped.  Hermione blinked, and all along the table, the Slytherins tensed up as if wands had been drawn.

‘Tell me,’ said Violet into the resulting hush, ‘is “Mudblood” as nasty as it sounds?’

‘Worse,’ hissed Tony, looking at Draco with sudden, intense dislike.  ‘It’s _horrible_.  Malfoy, you’d better apologise or I’ll – ’

Violet interrupted him by thrusting The Young Enchantress into his arms, forcing him to pause in drawing his wand, and walked up to Vincent Crabbe, who was sitting next to Draco.  ‘Could you move a bit, please?’ she asked sweetly, placing her hand lightly on his arm.  He shuffled aside, bewildered, as Violet leaned forward and picked up a jug of chilled pumpkin juice.

Blaise, on Draco’s other side, saw what was going to happen a split second before Violet did it.  He threw himself from the bench, rolling away toward the Ravenclaw table as Violet emptied the jug over Draco’s white-blond head.

‘Merlin’s _pants_!’ shrieked Draco.  ‘ _Violet!_ ’

‘Yes, Draco?’ she said sweetly.

Tony and Hermione were frozen, staring in shock at the bizarre tableau: Blaise on the ground with his hands splayed like Ophelia by Millais, Draco half-risen from his seat with icy pumpkin juice soaking into his hair and expensive robes and running down his back, and all the Slytherins and Ravenclaws on either side of the aisle in attitudes of astonishment and glee; a Greek chorus to witness the unfolding tragedy.

One of the Slytherins laughed.  Draco’s head whipped around so fast that drops of pumpkin juice flicked Crabbe in the face.  And, like a fire spreading along a piece of kindling, the laughter spread until even the Ravenclaws were rolling in their seats, laughing like mad.

Draco was out of his seat in an instant, his eyes filling with angry, humiliated tears.  He went for the door as quickly as he could without it looking like he was running away.  Watching him go, Violet felt immensely satisfied – and a little bit guilty.  She’d never really done anything like that before.  Hitting back because Dudley was going to hit her was one thing, fast and angry.  But hitting first, humiliating someone, even someone as cool and haughty as Draco, even when it was to defend a friend’s honour... There was something good and decent in bruises if you came by them honestly.  Bruising someone else didn’t feel so good.

She ruthlessly squashed the nagging voice in the back of her mind.  She was nothing like Dudley.  Picking on people who were too shy and small to fight back was his job.  Violet had simply been gunning for someone who deserved it.

‘Miss Potter,’ said a very cold voice.  Violet looked up to see Professor McGonagall looking down at her.  ‘Come with me.’

‘ _Morituri nolumus mori_ ,’ Violet said solemnly to Hermione, which was a phrase in the Latin book she’d borrowed from the library.

Violet followed Professor McGonagall out of the Great Hall and across the entrance hall to the staff room, which was empty.  She shut the door behind her.  Violet, staring at her tall, thin frame, thought maybe she dodged a bullet until she turned around.

‘Violet Potter,’ she said, nostrils flaring.  ‘Explain yourself.’

Violet, though the tallest girl in her year, felt tiny under Professor McGonagall’s gaze but squared her shoulders and forced herself to look the professor in the eye.  ‘He had it coming, Professor.’

‘And who are you to make that judgement or decide what retribution is appropriate?’ demanded Professor McGonagall.

Violet almost quailed, but managed to mumble, ‘He called Hermione a Mudblood and said she shouldn’t be at Hogwarts and that she’s not really a witch.’

Professor McGonagall’s eyebrows almost jumped off her face, and Violet felt as if a harsh spotlight had moved away from her and relaxed. 

‘Do you know what the word Mudblood means, Violet?’  Professor McGonagall’s voice was unnaturally calm.

What an odd question.  ‘It means someone whose parents are Muggles, right?  He shouldn’t have called her that.  It’s why Voldemort killed my mum.  Pure-blood supremacy.’  Violet nodded firmly.  She’d read about pure-blood supremacy in a library book and felt it was a nice grand saying to use.

‘Yes,’ said Professor McGonagall, and she seemed sad somehow, older and more tired than Violet had imagined she could be.  Then the moment passed, and she was stern again, but much less angry.  ‘You remind me very much of your father, Miss Potter.  He, too, had a sharp tongue and quick fists.  He was swift to jump to the defence of his friends.  He never passed up a chance to make fun of older students, more popular classmates, teachers – indeed, he seemed to enjoy making fun of anyone he should not have made fun of.  If you have a sharp tongue and quick fists, Miss Potter, then at least you come by them honestly.  However, your father also lost more points for Gryffindor than any other student in his year, and spent more time in detention than such a clever boy should have – and in that vein, I am going to take twenty points from Hufflepuff.  Learn from your father’s example, Miss Potter.  The man was admirable, but the boy was a troublemaker.’

Oh, she was certainly going to learn from her father’s example.  If anything, thought Violet as Professor McGonagall ushered her toward the entrance hall, James Potter’s track record was a prime example of why you shouldn’t get caught.

 

Draco wasn’t seen by anyone for the rest of the day.  Violet heard Hannah telling Lillian that she’d overhead Pansy telling Blaise that he was sulking in the dungeons and felt even guiltier about humiliating him at breakfast.  Hermione confirmed that he wasn’t showing up to class as they had afternoon tea in the grounds out of a basket the house elves had packed for them.

‘Feeling guilty?’ said Tony shrewdly.  Violet, who’d been very quiet so far, glared at him.

‘No,’ she said mulishly.

‘Yes, that’s why you’re walking around staring at your feet with your shoulders hunched and your hands in your pockets.’

‘That’s why you should shut your face,’ snapped Violet.

‘Well, _I_ think it was very gallant of you, Violet,’ said Hermione primly.  ‘Even if you did lose twenty points and make a horrible mess and waste an entire jug of pumpkin juice.  People shouldn’t get away with racism.  I took out some books during lunch.  Mudblood is just basically a racial slur!  I mean, there were Muggle-born witches and wizards who were killed when Voldemort was in power and that was the last word they ever heard!  I never thought Draco was a racist.  He seems so nice.’

‘You know, I don’t think we should be using Voldemort’s name,’ remarked Tony.  ‘All the boys in my dormitory get really edgy whenever I say it.’

‘Why?’ asked Violet, although it occurred to her that no one else ever said his name either, and looked uncomfortable when she did.  ‘You-Know-Who sounds stupid.  And He Who Must Not Be Named?  Why mustn’t he be named?’

‘Well, I guess it’s like the old saying, you know,’ said Hermione knowledgeably.  ‘Speak of the devil and he’s at your elbow.  I guess wizards are a bit more superstitious than regular people.’

‘That’s daft,’ said Violet.  ‘What kind of name is Voldemort anyway?  D’you think his mum just had him and said, wow, he looks like a Voldemort?’  They all dissolved into giggles.

 

The Great Hall at dinner that night drove all thoughts of Draco clean out of their minds, however.  The Hallowe’en decorations were extraordinary.  Bats wheeled and flocked overhead amid the masses of pumpkins that contained the floating candles.  The entrance to the Great Hall was flanked with enormous carved pumpkins that shrieked and gibbered whenever someone entered, and the tables all had centrepieces festooned with garlands of flowers in riotous orange and red and yellow.

Violet was stuffing her face with jacket potatoes that had been charmed to beg for mercy when they were cut or bitten (Sally-Anne had been moved almost to tears by hers, and one of the helpful fifth-years had put a Silencing Charm on it for her) when Professor Quirrell came running into the Great Hall, screaming his head off.  Violet liked Quirrell because he always seemed so frightened of her, so he let her get away with sitting in the back and chatting with Tony and Sally and Hannah.  She supposed that Defence Against the Dark Arts was an important subject that she ought to be paying more attention to, but she could always read up on the day’s lectures in the library later.

‘Troll in the dungeons!’ he shrieked, running between the tables toward the dais where the teachers sat.  ‘Thought – you ought – to know.’  He gasped out the last bit before keeling right over in a dead faint.

There was immediate chaos.  Violet, who’d always wanted to see a troll, didn’t see what the fuss was about and took advantage of the panic to steal Sally’s miniature pumpkin quiche, but she jumped all the same when Professor Dumbledore sent explosions out of his wand to shut everyone up.

‘Prefects,’ he rumbled, ‘lead your Houses back to their dormitories immediately!’

As Gabriel and Chloe led them from the Great Hall, Violet found Tony plucking at her elbow.

‘What?’ she hissed.

‘Draco!’ said Tony, his eyes wide with panic.  ‘Hermione said he was in the dungeons, remember?  He doesn’t know there’s a troll!’

‘Oh no,’ gasped Violet.  ‘Come on – don’t let the prefects spot us – ’

They hung back as the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs left the Great Hall and joined the Gryffindor line.  ‘Hermione!’ whispered Violet when they found her.  ‘We need to go find Draco!  He’s in the dungeons!’

‘Wait – shouldn’t we tell a teacher?’

‘No time!’ said Violet.  ‘Besides, I want to see a troll.’

‘But Violet, they’re really dangerous!’ protested Hermione.

‘Hermione, Draco’s down there!’ cried Tony.

She chewed her lip for a moment, then said, ‘Alright – but if we get caught, I’m saying it was all your idea!’

They slipped out of line in the entrance hall and scurried for the door to the dungeons.  They went unnoticed in the chaos, and everything went quiet the moment they shut the heavy dungeon door behind them.  There was nothing down here but distant echoes of the wind moaning through the long, damp passageways and the steady drip of water.

‘ _Lumos_ ,’ whispered Violet, lighting her wand.  ‘Okay, should we split up?’

‘ _No!_ ’ exclaimed Tony and Hermione in unison.

‘Fine, fine...’

They crept down into the dungeons, down stairs and up corridors, and unidentifiable sounds echoed at them out of the darkness.  The three of them held their lit wands out in front of them, and the three lights shed nine shadows, and made everything look pale and gloomy.

‘Maybe we should head back,’ whispered Hermione.  Violet was about to answer when a high, piercing shriek rang out, echoing along the dungeon hallways.

Violet ran in the direction of the scream with Tony and Hermione running after her, shouting at her to wait, shouting at her to be careful.  She burst into the boys’ loo near the potions classroom and stopped dead.

The troll was at least ten feet tall and was hunched over to fit inside the room.  Most of the doorframe was gone, and two toilet stalls had been smashed.  Draco was huddled at the other end of the room, screaming blue murder, and the troll – a thing like a giant ape with mottled grey-brown skin and an enormous club – was advancing on him menacingly, the top of its head scraping the ceiling.

Violet and Tony began picking up bits of wood from the smashed stalls and hurling them at the troll, trying to get its attention.

‘Stand back!’ cried Hermione.  The troll, startled by the cry, half-turned toward them, and Hermione shot a spray of coloured sparks in its face.

‘Come on!’ yelled Violet as it roared in discomfort and anger, pawing at its eyes.  It dropped its club with a boom that cracked the tiles.  Draco scrambled to his feet and darted around the troll, jumping nimbly over the club.  The troll made a wild grab for him, and Violet, who’d always been very quick – you had to be, living with Dudley – picked up a sharp, splintered piece of wood, ran forward, and jabbed it in the hand.  It bellowed again, swatting at her.  It missed, but she felt its fingertips brush her hair as she grabbed Draco’s hand.   ‘Run!’

They fled down the corridor as the troll exploded through the ruined doorway of the boys’ toilets, scattering yet more stone and plaster.  Still dazzled and blinded by Hermione’s magic, it blundered after them, hitting its head several times on the low ceiling as it pounded down the hallway.

‘What do we do?’ shrieked Hermione.

‘Split up?’ yelled Draco.

‘NO!’ shouted Violet, Tony and Hermione in perfect unison.

‘Back to the entrance hall!’ gasped Violet, and they set off at a run, holding hands so they wouldn’t lose one another.  When Hermione or Draco lagged behind, Violet and Tony helped to pull them along.  It was the most terrifying, exhilarating experience of Violet’s life since her flying lesson

They rounded a corner and ran smack into Professor McGonagall.

‘Professor!’ sobbed Hermione, who seemed to be fainting.  ‘Troll!’

She was with Professor Snape and Professor Quirrell, and the three teachers grabbed the children, thrusting themselves in front of them.  ‘Children,’ said Professor McGonagall commandingly, ‘the entrance hall is up this corridor.  Return there immediately and wait for us!’

The three teachers raised their wands as the children fled, and as they slipped through the door, the sounds of explosions and shouted incantations echoed up the hallway after them.  As soon as they were clear of the entrance to the dungeons, Hermione collapsed upon the stairs, almost weeping with exhaustion and relief.  Draco, very white and shaking violently, fell down next to her and put an awkward arm around her shoulders.  Violet hugged her, and Tony hugged Violet.  They remained like that, clinging mutely to one another as their heartbeats returned to normal.

That was how Professor McGonagall found them, huddled together as if for protection.  Professor Snape, Violet noticed, was limping and as he twitched his teacher’s gown over his leg, she saw the trouser leg shining darkly with blood.  She stifled a gasp and looked up into Professor McGonagall’s face.

‘What,’ demanded the professor, ‘did you think you were doing?’

‘Please, Professor,’ said Draco in a tiny voice, extracting himself from the tangle and standing up, ‘they were looking for me.’

‘Mr Malfoy!’ snapped Professor Snape.  ‘And just what were you doing in the dungeons?’

‘I... didn’t feel like going to the feast, sir,’ said Draco, not looking at Snape.  ‘I was down there when the troll came in.  They saved me.’  He gestured at Tony, Violet and Hermione, who remained in their huddle.  ‘If they hadn’t come for me, I’d probably be dead by now.’

‘We realised Draco didn’t know about the troll,’ piped up Tony.  ‘There wasn’t time to get anyone.  It’d almost killed him when we got there.’

‘Hermione distracted it,’ said Violet.  ‘She was brilliant.’

‘She saved me,’ said Draco, still looking everywhere except at the teachers.

‘I see,’ said Professor McGonagall, although she still looked rather forbidding, Violet thought.  ‘You are not hurt, Mr Malfoy?’

‘No, Professor.’

‘Well, I hope you four realise how lucky you have all been.  Not many first-year students could hope to come face-to-face with a fully-grown mountain troll and live to tell the tale!  Five points each will be awarded to Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Gryffindor for your concern for your fellow students.  Now, Professor Quirrell, if you could take Miss Potter back to the Hufflepuff common room, and Professor Snape, if you would escort Mr Malfoy, I shall take Miss Granger and Mr Goldstein back to the towers.’

Violet got up and dusted off her robes, and grinned when Draco flung his arms around Hermione and hugged her before pulling away, red in the face.

It was a short walk to the cellars and the Hufflepuff common room.  Violet searched for something to say.  ‘I quite liked your lecture on zombies, Professor,’ she said politely.

‘Oh, th-thank you, Miss P-Potter,’ stammered Professor Quirrell.  He really did have the most terrible stutter – sometimes his words jammed up completely and he got all red in the face and some of the nastier students laughed at him.  ‘T-terribly useful subject, D-Defence.’

‘Yes,’ said Violet, and there seemed nothing else to say until they got to the barrels.  Violet extended her hand for him to shake, feeling big and powerful and grown-up now that she’d faced down a troll.  Professor Quirrell gave it a terrified look, as if she were holding a dangerous snake, and practically fled back up the cellar.

Violet stared after him, puzzled, then crawled through the barrel.  To her delight, she found that food had been brought from the kitchens, and the feast was being carried on in the common room.  She accepted a pasty from Sally-Anne, and together they made a beeline for the knot of first-years crowded around the fire where Violet immediately burst forth, ‘You will _never_ guess where I was just now!’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I put the troll in the dungeons. This is an AU.
> 
> Also, the little spiel from The Young Enchantress about makeup is paraphrased from Catherynne M. Valente's novel Deathless which you should all read.


	16. The Three of Cups

_Together forever, no matter how long,_  
 _From now until the end of time._  
 _We’ll be together, and you can be sure_  
 _That forever and a day:_  
 _That’s how long we’ll stay,_  
 _Together and forevermore._

Violet couldn’t sleep.

She supposed it had to be a side effect of _fighting a troll_.  She giggled as she turned over in bed.  They’d fought a troll!  They’d saved Draco Malfoy from a ten-foot troll and gotten points for it.

‘Violet, be quiet,’ said Susan Bones sleepily, and there were grumpy mumbles of agreement from Sally and Megan.

Violet slipped out of bed and got changed into her red robes, the ones for exploring, and because it was cold, pulled on a school robe and cloak over it.  Padding out into the common room with _The Young Enchantress_ under one arm (this was her own copy that she’d ordered by post, sending Athena with money to a bookstore in Hogsmeade village), she skirted the few students who were still up, gave Zacharias Smith the finger when he glowered at her, and slipped out of the tunnel.  She paused for a moment, then went into the kitchens.

‘Miss Potter,’ squeaked Blodwen, bowing low.  ‘How can we be helping you tonight?’

‘I can’t sleep,’ explained Violet.  ‘Just thought I’d come by and see you all.’

‘Miss Potter is very kind,’ said Blodwen.  ‘We is very well, thank you.  Would Miss Potter like some tea?’

‘Ooh, yes please.’

Violet was seated at one of the long tables and tea and biscuits were set before her.  She read as she sipped her tea.

_We drink to health, we drink to happiness, we drink to luck, and this, we imagine, will ensure health and happiness and good fortune.  This is nonsense, but it is nonsense with its roots in magic.  A cup, after all, is a vessel of woman’s magic, and why else would you be here, dear reader, unless it were to learn women’s magic?  Think back to Helga Hufflepuff and her chalice, said to possess astonishing virtues; think of the witch Altheda, whose brimming cup brought her friend back from the brink of death; think of the druidess Cliodna, who could turn herself into a wave (for what is the ocean but the greatest of all cups and cauldrons?)  Here we shall list such enchantments as a young sorceress might seek out in a goblet, bowl, or any other vessel._

And so Violet read of Ceridwen’s Cauldron and the Rose Chalice and Blood of the Fairest until she came across the Three of Cups.

_This spell was devised by three sorceresses of great antiquity – some say of Egypt, some say of Greece, and some say of China – but it has been used by worthy wizards over the years as well as witches.  The purpose of this spell is to affirm bonds of friendship with geasa so that if they remain close and honour each other, strong magic shall bless and protect them..._

 ‘Say, Blodwen,’ said Violet.  ‘Could you get a message to the other dormitories for me?’

‘Of course, Miss Potter,’ said Blodwen.  ‘We house-elves can go nearly anywhere in Hogwarts.’

‘Could you go to the Gryffindor first-year girls’ dormitory and ask Hermione Granger to meet me in... hmm, where’s a good place for four students to meet in secret at this time of night?’

‘The dungeons, Miss?  Or perhaps the trophy room?’

‘Right, tell her to meet me in the trophy room.  And find Draco Malfoy in the Slytherin first-year boys’ dorm and Anthony Goldstein in the Ravenclaw first-year boys’ dorm, and tell them the same thing?’

‘Blodwen will go straight away Miss Potter!’ exclaimed Blodwen.

‘Thanks.  Remember to be quiet, though!  They have to sneak out.  Oh, and before you go, could you pack me a picnic basket... and maybe some candles?’

 

Hermione was the first to arrive, wrapped in her warm cloak.  Violet was lighting candles as she tiptoed in.

‘You shouldn’t even be here!’ hissed Hermione immediately, and Violet rolled her eyes.  ‘You could get in the most dreadful trouble if you got caught!’

‘Oh, don’t be so dreary,’ said Violet.  ‘Help me light these candles.’

By the time Tony and Draco showed up, Violet and Hermione had lit all the candles she’d brought.  These weren’t the white ones that burned in the Great Hall but thick and blood-red.  They sat in a wide circle of golden light which gilded Violet’s pale face and made picked out the brilliant highlights in Hermione’s bushy brown hair; Violet thought she looked quite beautiful.  They were unpacking the picnic basket she’d brought, laying out sandwiches, some cold chicken, some pies and a bottle that was labelled _Butterbeer_.

‘You couldn’t have your midnight feast in the dormitory?’ grumbled Draco.  ‘It’s freezing!’

‘Aw, is poor ickle Draco getting his toesies pinched by frost?’  Tony, it seemed, had not forgiven Draco quite so readily as had Violet and Hermione, although to his credit it never went past teasing.  ‘It’s not even properly winter yet.’

‘Besides,’ said Violet, ‘this isn’t just a midnight feast.’  She felt quite solemn as she produced her copy of _The Young Enchantress_ , bookmarked at the Three of Cups.  ‘I wanted to try a ritual.’

‘Oh no,’ groaned Draco.  ‘You know those never work, right?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Hermione testily.  Violet had explained the ritual to her and she’d seemed quite enthusiastic.

‘They put those in lots of girls’ magazines and things,’ explained Draco.  ‘Fun rituals to try with your friends!  But they’re not _real_ rituals.  None of them ever work.  They’re just for fun.  Besides, everyone knows that if it doesn’t use wands, it’s not very strong magic.’

‘Well, then let’s just do this for fun,’ said Violet.  She wasn’t inclined to listen to Draco.  _The Young Enchantress_ had always given very fine advice.  ‘That’s why I brought this bottle of Butterbeer.   The ritual I want to try is called Three of Cups.  The book says that it’s used to strengthen and affirm bonds of friendship.  It’s been rotten, having just three of us here when there should be four.  We broke our pact.  So I want to use this ritual to make sure that we won’t be separated when a troll comes after one of us again.  Are we all in?’

‘Sounds like fun,’ said Tony.  ‘What’ve we got to lose, right?  Besides, this is a British public boarding school.  We’re supposed to have midnight feasts and secret societies.  Hermione?’

‘I think it’s fascinating,’ said Hermione.  ‘There’s a book in the library called _A Gallery of Magical Archetypes and Motifs_ , what we’re doing is re-enacting the Three of Cups motif, like on Tarot cards.’

‘Okay... each of us needs to take turns swearing to each other and drinking from the bottle.’  Violet pointed at a paragraph on the page.  ‘Then we pass it onto the next person, and swear and sip and pass it on, until we’ve all had a sip.’

‘Swearing to each other?’ said Draco confusedly.  ‘Like... bugger, damnation, blast and blazes, that sort of thing?’

‘No, like... swearing to help each other, or something.  See, it says here – swear oaths of companionship.’

‘Can’t I have a sandwich first?’ asked Tony plaintively.  ‘I was so excited from the troll, I hardly ate anything at dinner.’  He reached out a hand and Violet smacked it, making him pull back and look hurt.

‘Ritual oath first, eating second,’ she said sternly.  ‘Alright, I’ll go first...’  She picked up the bottle of Butterbeer.  ‘Okay.  Um... We swear to always protect each other when we need it.’  She sipped from the bottle and smiled suddenly.  She‘d only tasted beer once before and found it quite nasty, but this stuff was sweet and warming.

Hermione took the bottle next. ‘Right.  We swear to... not pick on one another,’ she decided, and took a swig.

Draco took the bottle and tried to wipe the top without anyone noticing.  ‘Er... What should I swear?’ he asked.

‘Swear something that you’d want us to do for you, that you’ll do for us,’ said Tony with a shrug.

‘We swear to... not tell on each other to prefects, or teachers, or Filch,’ said Draco.  He hesitated before sipping, then handed it on to Tony.

‘We swear to help each other out with things,’ said Tony vaguely.  ‘Like – like homework, and if one of us needs to borrow a quill, or anything like that.’  He drank some of the Butterbeer, then looked around as if wondering what to do with it.

None of the children noticed, but the candles were beginning to flicker.

‘Alright,’ said Violet, looking mysterious and grand in the gloom and candlelight.  ‘That’s done it.  We’re a secret society.’

‘Wait!’ said Hermione suddenly.  ‘If we do this, we’re going to be a secret society, right?  Like the Secret Seven or the Famous Five?  We need a name!’

‘Who are the Famous Five?’ asked Draco blankly, and everyone giggled because even Tony knew who Enid Blyton was.

‘What do you think?’ asked Tony.  ‘We could call ourselves the – the Purple Peanut Club!’

‘Why purple peanuts?’ said Draco, wrinkling his nose.

‘Why not?’

‘How about...’ said Violet slowly, looking around the trophy room.  She took in the shields and pennants and enormous gilt cups with names of long-gone students carved on them, the plaques and medallions and enormous silver dishes.  ‘How about the Champions?’

‘Perfect!’ said Hermione delightedly.  ‘All in favour?’

‘Aye,’ said Tony, raising a fist.

‘I suppose,’ said Draco with a shrug.

‘Right... so do we, the Champions, swear,’ said Hermione

It should never have worked.  This was a silly ritual, spoiled from the very beginning, with Butterbeer serving as mead, candles instead of a firepit, schoolchildren in place of warriors who had spilled blood together.  There was no priest or oracle to witness the swearing.  But ringed by candlelight, four children who were thankful for each other’s company, grateful to be alive, swearing on and drinking to a friendship that was worth worlds and eternities to each of them?  Draco, who had never had any friends his own age that he really liked; Tony, who had always felt a little out of place in Israel and even more so in Britain; Hermione, who had been teased all through school; and Violet, whose hunger for friendship and love and companions to go through life at her side was like a beast tearing at her young insides: these four lonely children, swearing to each other in the Hogwarts trophy room, calling themselves the Champions under the eyes of all of the school’s champions and stars and legends who had gone before?

The Three of Cups bound them like iron, and as Hermione spoke, a freezing wind streamed through the trophy room, making the windows rattle and the banners on the walls flap.  It smelled of ice and salt and wood smoke, bittersweet and sharp.  It blew out all the candles and they were suddenly plunged into darkness.

Draco squeaked, and there was a muffled sound as Hermione clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream.  Violet sat unnaturally still, her heart beating fast, breathing deeply and trying not to panic.

‘ _Lumos_ ,’ said Tony, and held up his wand.  They all looked pale and frightened in its light.  ‘Alright, was that supposed to happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Violet, lighting the candles with hands that trembled.  ‘Get your wand out of my face before I stick it up your nose!’

‘Oh, I’d like to see you try, Potter!’ said Tony, wiggling his wand at her.

‘You shut up,’ said Violet eloquently, but she was grateful to him for lightening the mood.

‘Oh, I’m _starved_ ,’ sighed Draco, and seized a tiny mince-pie.

All three of them suddenly became aware that they were ravenously hungry and fell upon the spread like starving creatures.  What followed was a rather cheerful picnic where the conversation was held in whispers and the Butterbeer was emptied in sips.  Violet knew the pleasures of disobedience and the excitement that came of doing things that were Forbidden – in fact, with the Dursleys, the only other pleasures she’d known had been in books – but this was somehow different.  More... special.

She was just reaching for the last of the Butterbeer when Hermione motioned sharply for them to stop.  Everyone froze, listening, and from not too far off, they heard a door snap shut.

‘Filch!’ gasped Draco, going a dreadful shade of chalky white.

‘Run!’ hissed Tony.

Violet began blowing out candles and stuffing them into the picnic basket, but Hermione grabbed her arm.  ‘Come on!  There’s no time!’

‘Wait, Hermione!’  Tony whispered something urgently to her and she nodded, and together they flicked their wands, chorusing, ‘ _Depulso_!’  The paper plates and food and candles went flying away from them, rolling and splattering across the floor as if they’d been kicked.

‘So he might think Peeves did it,’ whispered Tony, and they fled, Violet still clutching the Butterbeer bottle.  The four of them fled out through the door in the eastern wall as the northern door banged open and Filch screeched, ‘GOTCHA!’

Terror gave Violet wings.  It was like being on a broomstick again; she felt utterly, gloriously alive as she ran, her heart racing, her hair streaming behind her.  Tony, with his long legs, was keeping up with her fairly well, while Draco and Hermione lagged just a little behind.  She flew down the main third floor hallway like a phantom and ran bang into a suit of armour that came crashing down around her.

‘ _Violet_!’ wailed Draco

‘I’LL GET YOU!’ yelled Filch, and they saw the distant light of his lantern bobbing toward them.

‘We’re doomed,’ moaned Tony.  ‘We’re dead and we just haven’t lain down yet.’

‘Through there!’ gasped Violet, pointing at the nearest door.  She dashed over to it and wrenched at the doorknob.  ‘It’s locked!’

‘Move over!’ hissed Hermione.  She whipped out her wand and whispered, ‘ _Alohomora_!’ before darting through, pulling Violet along with her. Draco and Tony slipped in after them and very quietly shut the door.

The four of them remained perfectly still, their ears pressed to the door.  Hermione was standing on Violet’s foot, and Draco was clinging to her arm so hard he was cutting off the circulation.  Violet could feel her heart pounding like a drum, and in the stifling gloom, every sound seemed magnified: Hermione’s breath in her ear, Tony shifting slightly, Draco trembling against her arm.  Her heart was beating so hard she was sure that Filch could hear it through the door.

The light of his lantern shone through the gap beneath the door, and they all held their breaths.  Would he try the doorknob?  Then the light receded and they heard footsteps walking away.

They remained like that for a long moment, straining to hear something, anything.

‘Are we safe?’ breathed Hermione.

‘No,’ said Draco faintly.

They turned to see what he was pointing at and froze.

Three black, wet noses.  Six shiny, beady eyes.  And three mouths full of very large, very sharp teeth, each one as long as Violet’s arm.

‘ _Sh’ma Yisra’el_ ,’ whispered Tony.  Violet could feel him trembling.  ‘ _Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad_.’

Hermione screamed, a terrible, piercing sound which set Violet and Draco off screaming as well.  Tony wrenched open the door as the three-headed dog lunged, grabbing Violet and Draco and dragging them through.  Hermione, who’d shrunk against a wall and was sliding down it, was pulled through as Violet grabbed her arm.

The four of them threw their weight against the door as the gigantic dog slammed into it on the other side, almost throwing them to the floor.  They heard the bolt slide home and backed away hastily in case it broke through.  It didn’t.

‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ whimpered Hermione, tears running down her face sank to the floor.  Violet was already sprawled on the floor, every nerve in her body thrumming with pure terror.

‘What was that?’ she croaked.

‘That was the third floor corridor,’ said Tony faintly, patting Hermione on the back.  ‘The one we’re not allowed in.’

‘Bed,’ gasped Draco suddenly.  ‘Go – to bed.  I’m going.  I’m done.  So done.’  Staring at the door behind which a three-headed monster snarled and slavered, Violet felt inclined to agree.  It wasn’t until she was lying in bed, having seen Draco back to the entrance of the dungeons and washed the Butterbeer bottle out and put it on her nightstand, that she realised she’d left her copy of _The Young Enchantress_ in the trophy room.


	17. The Deadly Broomstick Escapade of Stupidity

_"Don’t tell me not live, just sit and putter!_  
 _Life’s candy the sun’s a ball of butter!_  
 _Don’t bring around a cloud to rain on my parade!_  
 _Don’t tell me not to fly, I’ve simply got to!_  
 _If someone takes a spill it’s me and not you!_  
 _Who told you you’re allowed to rain on my parade?"_

Violet lay awake all night and rose the next morning fretting and anxious.  What if they figured out who’d been in the trophy room?  What if they found out that the book was hers?  Would they expel her?  She didn’t think she would survive the Dursleys, not now that she knew this world existed.  It was like eating fairy fruit in stories; if she was sent away with her wand snapped in two, she would waste away and die for want of more magic.

At breakfast, she made a point of sitting near the older students.  It was a bit annoying having to peer up at everyone, but Cedric and the girl everyone said he was stepping out with, Priya, made room for her between them and tried to include her in their conversations.  Priya was a fierce-looking girl with glossy raven hair that Violet envied and black eyeliner so sharp and fine she looked like a cat.

‘Hey Ced?’ said Violet as she stuffed herself with dolmades (which weren’t a normal Hogwarts dish, but the house-elves knew by now that Violet loved to try new things).  ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?  Like, the biggest rule you’ve broken?’

‘Golden Boy here?’ laughed Priya.  ‘He doesn’t break the rules.  His heart would literally stop if he tried.’

‘That’s my story and I’m sticking to it,’ said Cedric, winking, and Violet grinned.  He really was _marvellously_ handsome.  ‘If you want rule-breaking, talk to Priya.’

‘You’d do better to ask the Weasley twins,’ said Priya sagely.  ‘The redheads in Gryffindor?  Kind of legends in their own time, those two.’

‘Why?  What’ve they done?’

‘Oh, all sorts of things,’ Priya mused.  ‘Hm.  There was one time, they put raw Gurdyroots in the Slytherins’ soup right before it went up for dinner. And once they broke into the staff room and jinxed all the teachers’ inkpots to explode when they were opened.  Lost fifty points from Gryffindor for that.’

‘Oh,’ said Violet.  That cheered her up considerably.  ‘Thanks!’  They wouldn’t expel her for being out at night, not when the Weasleys had tampered with dinner and probably ruined a few very nice cloaks in the process.  ‘Do you know where Lost Property is?’

 

After morning classes, Violet promised to meet the other Champions (she and Hermione were pushing the name as hard as they could, trying to make it stick) by the boat house where they were going to spend their lunch break skipping rocks and maybe trying to catch a glimpse of the giant squid before hurrying off to the staff room where Priya had told her they had a Lost Property box that was bigger on the inside.  ‘Like a TARDIS!’ she’d said with glee, only to roll her eyes when Cedric and Violet stared at her blankly.

She tapped gently at the door.  There was no answer.  Maybe she could just slip in and find the Lost Property box and be out before anyone realised...  She pushed open the door and yelped in shock.

Professor Snape was sitting near the fire, his robes hiked up above his knee.  His left trouser leg was rolled up, and he was in process of unwinding bloody bandages from his calf which more closely resembled mincemeat than someone’s leg.  He looked around as she came in, hair flying, dark eyes snapping.

‘Miss Potter!’ he snarled.  ‘How dare you enter the staffroom without permission!’

‘I knocked!’ she protested.  ‘What happened to your leg?’

Snape, who had half-risen from his seat like a demon in a pantomime, settled back down, scowling darkly.  ‘Never you mind, Miss Potter.  Get out of here!’

‘I was looking for Lost Property,’ said Violet, who had never once in her life given up on something once she had decided she wanted it.  ‘I lost a book.’

Professor Snape made a noise halfway between a sigh and a growl.  ‘While you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful.  We’ll go through Lost Property after.  Hold these for me.’

Violet hurried over and took the rolls of bandages he held out.  ‘What did this to you?’ she asked in awe.  ‘It must’ve been something really big.’

‘It is a monster I keep in the dungeons to eat impertinent little girls who ask prying questions,’ growled Professor Snape, dabbing a green potion on his wounds.

‘You couldn’t keep something that big in the dungeons,’ remarked Violet.  She watched in fascination as the potion evaporated in little puffs of pale green steam, leaving behind taut and shiny new skin that looked like it had been healing for weeks.  ‘How would it get enough exercise?’

‘Do you always contradict your elders, Miss Potter?’

‘Only when they’re wrong,’ said Violet blithely.  She held the bandages as Snape bound up his leg and cut it off, securing the loose end with a tap of his wand.  ‘Doesn’t that hurt?’

‘Yes,’ said Snape shortly.  He let his robes fall, covering the tattered trouser leg.  ‘Come, Miss Potter.  I promised to show you the Lost Property box, as I recall.’  It was a large chest in the corner of the staffroom, banded with bright golden metal with five keyholes.  ‘You said that you lost a book?’

‘Yes,’ said Violet.  ‘Oooh!’  Professor Snape had taken a large golden key down from on top of a shelf and unlocked the third keyhole, lifting the lid to reveal a hole that seemed to go down and down and down into the floor, filled with stacks and stacks of books.  ‘It was this one,’ she said, picking up her copy of _The Young Enchantress_ and hugging it to her chest.  ‘Thank you, sir.  I’ll just go, I promised to meet –’

‘You know, Miss Potter,’ said Snape silkily, ‘I do believe Mr Filch brought that book in this morning.  He said that students had been out of bed, and one of them must have left it behind, along with a terrible mess in the trophy room that he was forced to clean up.  Mince pies and sandwiches everywhere.  What do you think of that, Miss Potter?’

‘I think Peeves took it,’ said Violet.  She stared straight back into those black eyes, making her own as big and innocent as she could.  ‘The Hufflepuff dormitories are near the kitchens, and Peeves is always stealing food to throw at people.  I think he must have taken my book then as well.’

Violet could feel Snape’s eyes boring into hers, but she forced herself not to look away.  ‘Plausible,’ said Snape.  ‘Even probable.  Everyone knows that Filch is obsessed with catching students out of bed after hours –’ Violet didn’t but filed that away for future reference ‘ – and that Peeves is an inveterate prankster.  It would not be difficult to convince someone that he had slipped into the Hufflepuff dormitories as well.’  At long last, Snape waved a hand tiredly.  ‘Five points from Hufflepuff for being out after hours and another five for lying to a teacher.  You would have made an excellent Slytherin, Miss Potter.’

 

‘Bite marks?’ said Tony.

‘All up his leg,’ confirmed Violet, throwing a pebble ineffectually at the water.  ‘He wouldn’t tell me what did it, though.’

‘Weird...’

‘And you said he was changing the bandages,’ mused Draco.  ‘Which means he must’ve gotten hurt before you saw him.’  

‘Do you think it was that dog that did it?’ asked Violet.  ‘They were dreadful big bite marks.’  The four of them shivered collectively; their meeting of the previous night had left terror jangling in some deep, simian corner of their brains.

‘What I want to know is what Filch was doing on the third floor at two in the morning,’ said Hermione when the moment passed.  ‘He usually sticks to the top floors after midnight, he wouldn’t have been in the trophy room unless he was looking for something.

‘How do you know that?’ demanded Draco testily.

‘Sometimes I listen to people, Draco,’ said Hermione, rolling her eyes.  ‘That’s a thing some people do.’

Tony, meanwhile, was correcting Violet’s pebble-throwing technique.  ‘No, look – try and throw it at a flat angle, so it hits the water sharply and bounces off – ’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ she complained, throwing another stone, which sank like, well, a stone.

‘Here, look at this.’  He fished some parchment out of his pocket and smoothed it out against the tree trunk under which they’d spread their picnic blanket.  ‘Hermione, lend me a quill?  Right, this is the water, and you should throw it like this...’

‘Who could’ve told on us, though?’ complained Draco.  ‘No one in Slytherin would have.  I gave all the other first year boys a Galleon each to keep quiet.’

‘Why wouldn’t they tell anyway?’ asked Hermione.

‘Cos if they had, they’d know Draco wouldn’t’ve tried to pay them off again,’ said Violet shrewdly.  She threw the rest of the pebbles into the lake, giving up on skipping them entirely.  ‘I’m starved.’

‘I don’t think anyone saw me,’ said Hermione slowly.  ‘Anyway, it’s Gryffindor.  They’re very... casual about rules in Gryffindor – have you met the Weasley twins?  Percy – you know, the prefect – might have, but he wouldn’t have told on me to Filch, he would have stopped me right there.’

‘Well, there’s always someone coming and going from Ravenclaw in the middle of the night,’ said Tony.  ‘So one first-year isn’t exactly going to attract attention.  Violet?’

Violet thought back to last night, to who she’d seen as she went sneaking out of the common room.  There’d been a few students around, but the only one who’d really taken notice was...

‘Smith,’ she growled.  ‘How’d he know where I was - The house-elves.  He must’ve got it out of the house-elves.’

‘We have to get him back,’ said Draco instantly.  He’d been very eager to prove his loyalty since making his peace with Hermione and the others.  ‘Let’s feed him to the giant squid.’

‘We need to make sure it was Smith first,’ Tony said sternly.  ‘How would you feel if it turns out it wasn’t him and we fed him to the squid anyway?’

‘Bloody great is how, Smith’s a - bit of a shit.’  The forbidden profanity was expelled like smoke from an illicit cigarette; Violet felt a thrill of disobedience as it left her lips.

‘We should make sure anyway,’ said Tony.  ‘Let’s go see the house-elves after dinner.’

‘Can’t we just leave it?’ complained Hermione.  ‘None of us got in trouble.’

‘But if we let him get away with it, he’ll think he can try things like that again,’ protested Violet.  ‘We need to show him that we won’t put up with this kind of nonsense.  Can we put vomitives in his pumpkin juice?  I’ve got a recipe in here for a potion for the purging of the stomach after ingesting poison.’  She began leafing through _The Young Enchantress_.

‘ _Absolutely not_ ,’ said Hermione in such a forbidding tone that Violet stared.  ‘We’re not mucking about with potions in people’s food, that’s dangerous!  He could be allergic to salamander eyes or something and then you’d be a murderer.’

‘Either way,’ said Tony loudly before Violet could answer back, ‘there’s not much point talking about it until we find out whether or not it was Smith, so we’re not going to argue!  There’s been enough of that!’

Violet used her free period (which was supposed to be History of Magic, which she never went to anyway) to go down to the kitchens and question the house-elves.

‘Blodwen,’ said Violet with great delicacy, ‘did anyone come in here asking after me last night after I left?’

‘Yes, Mistress,’ squeaked Blodwen.  ‘Young Master Smith, from Hufflepuff!  He says he is coming to surprise you because you are such good friends!  Did we do wrong, Mistress?’

‘Oh no,’ said Violet sweetly.  ‘No, it was such a _lovely_ surprise!  I think I might plan one for him in return.’

 

Now that it was confirmed that Smith had been the one to give them away, Violet was determined that he should not get away with it.  Draco and Tony agreed, but Hermione proved difficult to persuade.

‘None of us got in trouble and if we take silly risks trying to get him back for what he did, we actually might,’ she insisted.

‘But Hermione,’ whined Violet, hanging off her arm as she marched up to Gryffindor Tower after lunch.  ‘We’re comrades now.  You drank an oath.  You _have_ to help us.’

‘I’m sure you don’t need my help,’ said Hermione with great dignity.

‘I guess I can ask Tony for a schedule of Filch’s patrols,’ said Violet.  ‘Thanks anyway.’

‘Tony couldn’t draw up a timetable from observation if his life depended on it,’ said Hermione, stopping dead so that Violet ran into her.  Her nostrils flared and for a moment she looked just like Professor McGonagall.  It was true, too.  While Tony was marvellously clever, always finding new ways of doing things, he sometimes walked into walls because he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going.

‘Does that mean you’ll help us?’ grinned Violet.

Hermione glared, hands on her hips.  Violet could tell she was going to make her pay for having manipulated her.  ‘I don’t see how I can.  But I will introduce you to someone who could.’

Hermione’s “consultants” had arranged to meet the four of them after dinner in a disused classroom on the sixth floor.  Tony, Draco and Violet walked up, discussing the situation in low voices.

‘Being mysterious really doesn’t suit her,’ grumbled Violet.  ‘I bet Percy Weasley’s waiting for us up there now to tell us off.’

‘On the other hand, if she thinks someone can help, they probably can,’ said Draco.  ‘She’s smart.  Probably the smartest of us.  No offence, Tony.’

‘None taken,’ said Tony cheerfully.  Tony was very proud of his learning, but he was the first to admit he had awful trouble concentrating on anything he didn’t think was interesting.

Hermione waited for them in a dusty classroom filled with busts and blank canvases.  She sat on a low stool, glaring up at two figures that stood by the teacher’s desk.  Stocky, redheaded figures in Gryffindor ties, one leaning against the desk with a cigarette, the other writing a dirty limerick on the blackboard.  The famous Weasley twins.  They had their ties undone and their shirts untucked and the one with the cigarette was blowing smoke rings.  Violet immediately promised to herself that she would learn to blow smoke rings someday.

‘Ickle Violet Potter,’ said the one with the chalk.  ‘Granger’s been telling us about you.’

‘’Course,’ added the other one, stubbing out his cigarette on the teacher’s desk and sticking it behind his ear, ‘it’s not like we don’t hear about you anyway.  Famous Violet Potter, finally at Hogwarts.  The Prophet did a piece on you.’

They turned around and leaned forward as one.  It was fascinating to watch; they moved in perfect unison, like they’d rehearsed it.  ‘What can we do for you, then?’

Violet cleared her throat while Draco and Tony hung back.  Being still quite small, they were inclined to be wary of any creature larger than them, especially senior boys.  ‘There’s a boy in Hufflepuff.  Zacharias Smith.  He told on us to Filch when the four of us – me and Hermione and these two – snuck out for a picnic in the trophy room last night.  I want to get him back.’  Her eyes shone and her hands clenched into fists, remembering all the times she’d been wronged in the past, all the clouts about the ear and the days without food that had gone unpunished, all the crimes committed against her that had driven her to steal and break things just so the world would know that all was not well.  ‘I want him to know it was us.  I want him to be as scared as we were.  And I want him to be _sorry_.’

The twins glanced at one another.  One raised an eyebrow; the other shrugged.

‘Well, Potter,’ said the one with the cigarette, ‘you’ve come to the right people.  Let’s talk price.’

Violet let Hermione haggle, and she eventually glared the twins down to two Galleons.  In return, the twins had furnished them with a simple map of the upper dungeons and the cellars.

‘What good is – Oh,’ said Violet.  She breathed in deep, dizzy with excitement.  ‘ _Ohhhh_.’

‘Just so,’ said Fred with a twinkle in his eye.  ‘We can’t give you a _plan;_ that’d be –’

‘ – bad for your character,’ said George.  ‘Firsties have to learn to figure these things out for themselves.  But I think you’ll get your money’s worth out of this.’

‘Do you always talk around each other like that?’ asked Tony interestedly.  ‘Or did you practise?’

Violet sprang up from the stool where she’d been sitting and offered a hand to George to shake, then to Fred.  ‘Pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen,’ she said gravely.  She’d heard people say that on the telly.

‘We’ll meet again, Potter,’ said Fred.

‘I don’t think Hogwarts has heard the last of you,’ added George.

 

 

After dinner that night, the four of them sat around the back end of the Gryffindor table poring over the map.  The Great Hall had mostly emptied by this time, but a burly fifth-year waved at Violet from a little ways down the bench and she waved back shyly.

‘Right, so there are three secret passages on this map,’ said Hermione.  She liked to organise things, so Violet had let her have charge of the operation as a way of getting her to go along with it.  ‘Two of them lead into the dungeons from the cellars, and one leads from the dungeons into the Hufflepuff boys’ dormitories.  That one will be useful.  We have access, all we need is a plan.’

‘Muck from the dungeons,’ said Tony immediately.  ‘It’s all over the walls in the lower dungeons.  We scrape some off and stuff his mattress with it.’

‘It has the genius of simplicity,’ said Hermione, looking at Violet.

‘We don’t want simplicity,’ said Violet decidedly.  ‘I mean, a damp, smelly bed that’ll be clean in half an hour, that’s not a proper revenge.  We want to make him scared of us.  That’ll just make him angry, which means he’ll try something again.  We have to make him afraid to touch us.’

‘We could kill him,’ suggested Draco.  They all stared at him.  ‘What?  You asked for suggestions!’

‘I don’t want to kill him,’ said Violet.  ‘Then he won’t know that we won.’

‘You’re both terrifying,’ Tony chimed in.  ‘Let’s put beetles in his bed hangings.’

‘Let’s put a curse on him so that whenever he sits down, he’ll feel like the chair is red-hot,’ said Violet.

‘Alright Jadis, that’s enough of that,’ said Hermione testily.  ‘We want to scare him, not damage him forever.’

‘Itching powder,’ said Violet, remembering a book she’d read once.

‘What’s itching powder?’ Draco asked.

‘Powder that itches, silly.  We can sprinkle some in his bed before he goes to sleep.  He’ll spend half the night itching and scratching and when he wakes up he’ll be all splotchy and red.’

‘We can tell everyone he’s got fleas,’ said Draco with relish.

‘You’re all terrible people and I just want to say that I’m against this,’ Hermione said loftily.  ‘Now, how soon can we get this ready?’

 

It would take a few library excursions to find a recipe for itching powder, and until they located one, Hermione had them all on their best behaviour.   Or, at least, she had Tony and Draco on their best behaviour.  Violet remained what Hermione called “incorrigible” and what Draco called “a great bloody nuisance” and what Tony called “a right nutjob”, but she noticed that Hermione always had ideas to contribute to their plans, Draco didn’t so much go along with them as jump onto them and hang on with both hands, and Tony treated every school rule broken as a kind of thrilling adventure.

All three of them, however, were splendidly angry with Violet over what Tony later solemnly dubbed the Deadly Broomstick Escapade of Stupidity.

It was the Quidditch match that had done it.  It was the first match of the season, Gryffindor against Slytherin.  Hermione had come along to cheer for Gryffindor and Draco was in green cheering for Slytherin.  Draco had strongarmed Tony into bringing a green pennant as well, reasoning that Violet was friends with Neville and would therefore probably be supporting Gryffindor with Hermione, and this way it was an even split.  Violet scowled – after all, she was friends with Blaise too, sort of – but wore her red robes with her black school cloak over them.

The air was crackling with tension out in the chilly stands, with the wind whipping at their hair and clothes.  The crowd shifted and murmured like some enormous restless beast with hundreds of voices, and Violet munched on a carton of popcorn that she’d begged from the house elves before coming out as they waited for the match to begin.  One end of the pitch was a mass of solid green, the other was all in red.  Despite Draco’s protestations, they were sitting down the Gryffindor end because Violet had demanded it, and Draco wanted to get at her popcorn and so he sulked, a lone mote of green in a sea of red and gold.

But then the match began and Violet forgot all about popcorn.  She watched with her heart in her mouth, gasping and pointing, clapping and cheering with the rest of the crowd as the players flew.  It was like a dance, a terrible, wonderful dance where they wove in and out of each other with such grace, such skill, such speed that Violet very nearly screamed when they came too close to one another.  She barely registered the game at all, only seeing the flight, the beauty of it, and her heart cried out to be up there with them, soaring through the sky like a comet.

 

That night, Violet slipped out of bed and made her way down to the Quidditch pitch.  Despite its lack of aerodynamic advantage, she had her hat on and having stolen a few hatpins from Susan Bones (she reasoned that Susan was awfully nice and so surely would have given her permission to take them if she’d known, so she was really just cutting out the middleman) she’d done her hair up in a bun as shown in a diagram in The Young Enchantress and pinned her hat to it.  She wore a black school robe over her red adventuring robes and a cloak over that, and she had a Hufflepuff scarf wrapped around her neck.

Slipping out through the castle’s front doors – wasn’t it dangerous, leaving them unlocked like that? – she hurried down the moonlit path that led from the steps toward the Quidditch pitch.  It was a beautiful night.  Her breath turned to mist before her and the stars shone clearer and brighter than she’d ever seen before.  The air was so cold and pure it was like breathing ice.

Violet didn’t know much about woodcraft or else she’d have known better than to stroll down the wide gravel path that twinkled in the moonlight, showing up against it in her black and scarlet robes like a bloodstain on snow.  The towers of Hogwarts were high and its windows were many, and more than one still twinkled with light.

The broom shed near the pitch was locked, but Violet had come across enough locked doors at Hogwarts to learn the Alohomora charm by now (from the Latin, said a book in the library, _alo hoc mora_ , meaning to remove the obstacle, which just showed you how silly wizards could get) and mad short work of the heavy padlock.

Taking out one of the old school brooms, Violet sat astride it and took off.

The world fell away as she rose out of the shadow of the stands.  She hardly dared to breathe, and simply rose straight up for about thirty seconds before stopping.  The grounds of Hogwarts were spread out beneath her, made dark and strange by the night, a mysterious foreign land where anything might happen.  The wind stirred her cloak and it was so cold her face tingled.  In the distance, Hogwarts rose, a dark shape against the stars.  A world of shadows edged in silver.

She simply flew, all alone in a world of her own where there were only stars and wind to keep her company.  From somewhere deep in the forest, she heard a sound that raised the hairs on the back of her neck.  A wolf.

Violet wove in and out of the stands, among the goal hoops at either end of the pitch in complete silence.  It was nothing like her last time on a broomstick – there was no mad flight, no wild rush.  Just this solemn, mysterious joy filling her heart until the beauty of it all made her feel like she might burst.  Here, now, on a broomstick under the stars, Violet felt as if she might live forever.

Her hands had gone rigid with the cold and she was having trouble letting go of the broomstick, and so she had begun steering it to the ground when she saw something move from the corner of her eye.  She barely had time to register that someone was standing on the pitch and feel a sudden stab of shock when something smashed into the broomstick in a flash of green light, blasting it to splinters and sending her tumbling the last ten feet through the air and into the grass.  Someone was screaming, and she dimly realised that it was her in the last instant before she landed hard on her back and the world seemed to stutter for a moment.

Violet’s ears were ringing and she choked, trying desperately to draw a breath but her lungs didn’t seem to be listening to her.  She lay on her back as splinters of ash and fragments of birch twig rained down, some of them trailing smoke.  She struggled to get up but her limbs seemed incapable of anything more than scrabbling helplessly at the grass.

Someone had attacked her.  Someone had _attacked_ her.

A different kind of purity came over her now.  Where before it had been a sort of rapturous awe, now it was screaming animal terror.  She lurched over, still unable to get up, but she could definitely crawl.  She heard the crunch of frosted grass and knew that someone was walking toward her.  With a strength born of panic, she drew her wand and – still unable to draw enough breath to speak – waved it frantically and wordlessly over her shoulder.  Nothing happened.

Something heavy settled her between the shoulderblades, pressing her into the ground, and at the same time her scar burst into molten agony.  Violet thrashed and writhed and beat her head against the turf of the Quidditch pitch.  She couldn’t breathe deeply enough to scream or she would have been howling fit to wake the castle.  It felt like someone had sliced the cut on her forehead open anew and was pressing red-hot coals into it.  The pain was blinding, jagged, driving out every thought and sending mad starbursts across her vision.

Then a flash of light filled the world and everything went mercifully dark.

 

When Violet awoke, it was in the hospital wing.  The clock on the wall said that it was gone noon and Violet wondered just how much trouble she was in.  Her hand went to her forehead; her scar no longer hurt, but tingled with the memory of that awful pain.

 ‘Violet Petunia Potter.’  She sat up to see Madam Pomfrey coming in with lunch on a folding tray.  ‘You are in terrible trouble.’

Right on cue, Professors Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall and Sprout entered the room, and Violet sank timidly back down among her pillows.  McGonagall and Sprout looked worried.  Snape looked murderous.  Dumbledore looked like he always did: imperturbable.

‘Oh dear,’ said Violet in a tiny voice.  This did not help, as Professor McGonagall’s face settled into sternness and Snape actually seemed to grow a few inches as he glowered at her.

‘Don’t worry, Miss Potter, you’re not in any trouble,’ began Dumbledore, but Snape interrupted him.

‘Oh, is she not?’ he burst out, and Violet could tell he’d been holding himself back since entering the room.  ‘Headmaster, this foolish, wilful girl nearly got herself killed last night breaking school rules set there for her protection –’

‘And she’s paid dearly for it so I’ll thank you to stop shouting,’ said Professor Sprout sharply.  ‘Violet, dear, how are you feeling?’

‘She’s hungry, of course,’ snapped Madam Pomfrey.  ‘She’s not eaten since dinner yesterday and it’s gone noon.’  She unfolded the tray’s legs across Violet’s lap and helped her sit up.  ‘If my patient could be allowed to eat before you all begin shouting her down?’

Violet decided she liked Madam Pomfrey.  It wasn’t likely to help, but she was glad the matron was at least trying to fend off the angry teachers.

‘I’m fine, Professor Sprout,’ she mumbled, not looking at any of the teachers.  Professor McGonagall just looked so... disappointed.

‘Do you think you could tell us about what happened last night?  On the Quidditch pitch?’

‘I went out to fly,’ she said quietly, staring at the toast in front of her.  ‘Madam Hooch said I wasn’t allowed to take flying lessons anymore, but after seeing the Quidditch match yesterday, I wanted to fly again.  More than anything.  So I went out and took out one of the school brooms and I was just flying around the pitch.  I wasn’t doing any harm!’  She didn’t realise how tightly her fists were clenched until Professor Sprout took her hands; her nails had dug into her palms.

‘Hush, hush,’ said Professor Sprout soothingly.  ‘Of course you couldn’t do any harm, a girl like you!  So you just wanted to fly?  You weren’t meeting anyone there?’

‘Oh no, Professor.  My friends would probably have told me it was stupid and told me off.’

‘You should listen to them,’ growled Snape, and Violet shrank into her pillows under his glare.  He was angry, no doubt about that, but there was something worse there – as if Violet had upset him personally somehow.  ‘Do you understand what could have happened last night, you stupid girl?  Do you know how close you came to the worst kind of death, the kind your mother died to keep you from?  Selfish, wilful –’

‘That is enough!’ shouted Professor McGonagall, speaking for the first time.  ‘Severus, you will please wait outside!’

‘The girl must –’

McGonagall’s flinty blue eyes locked with Snape’s dark ones, and Snape looked away first, stalking out of the hospital wing.

Violet had sunk back against the bed so far she had almost vanished back under the covers.  Prickly hot shame was creeping through her, and she felt tears gathering in her eyes.  ‘I didn’t – I didn’t mean to – I didn’t want –’ Her breath kept hitching, getting in the way of her words.

‘Oh, my dear,’ said Professor Sprout, giving her a hug.  ‘Oh, don’t cry, there’s no harm done.  He was just frightened is all!  Professor Snape was the one who saved you!  It’s only because he cares about you that he was so angry, if he didn’t care then he wouldn’t bother shouting at you for putting yourself in danger.  One more moment and he’d have been stumbling over your corpse!’

‘Oh yes, that’s very helpful!’ snapped Professor McGonagall.

Violet couldn’t help it; she laughed.  Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling, spoke before Professor Sprout could snap back at McGonagall.  ‘Miss Potter, may we ask you some questions?  Then we will leave you to your lunch – and I believe your friends will want to see you.’

Faced with this temptation, Violet sat up straight, hands folded in her lap, and so the interrogation began.  No, no one else had known she was going to sneak out.  No, she hadn’t seen anyone following her.  No, she had no notion of who it might have been.

Finally, Professor Dumbledore said, ‘I would like to ask one last thing of you, Miss Potter, if I may.’  He held up his wand.  ‘I would like to make a copy of your memory of what happened last night so that we may examine it more closely.’

‘Alright,’ said Violet agreeably.  ‘How are you going to do it?’

‘Just think back to last night.  Remember everything – remember how you felt, what you saw.  How cold it was, the smell of frost, the starlight and the fear...’

Violet took a deep, noisy breath and let it out slowly, concentrating hard on remembering everything as Dumbledore placed his wand gently on her temple.  Her heart began to race with the memory of her flight – and then with remembered fear.  She remembered the pain, the terror.  She remembered thinking she was about to die.

‘Violet?’

She opened her eyes to find Professor McGonagall looking down at her, her face worried.  Violet didn’t realise how tightly she’d clenched her fists until Professor McGonagall put her hand over Violet’s, and her fingers had gone stiff, her nails leaving marks in her palms.

‘Violet, are you alright?’

Violet nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and gulped the glass of water Professor McGonagall poured for her.  Professor Dumbledore held up his wand, and clinging to the end was a long, silvery strand of misty light.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, fascinated.

‘Your thoughts, Miss Potter.  Thank you.’  He lifted it and fed it into a small vial, which he tucked away inside his sleeve.

‘Can you teach me to do that?’

Professor Dumbledore smiled.  ‘All in good time, Miss Potter.’

‘Violet, dear,’ said Professor Sprout, sitting on the bed, ‘please, you must understand that you just can’t go wandering around after hours.  Professor Snape can be harsh, but his heart is in the right place.  You should listen to what he says.’  She kissed Violet on top of her head as she stood.  ‘We have a duty of care toward the students here.  We are responsible for your wellbeing, but we can’t keep you save and healthy if you won’t let us, alright?  We aren’t here to stop you having fun.  But we answer to other people about your safety.  And he’s quite right –’ She hesitated, then plunged on, ‘ – your parents gave you life, and gave up theirs so you could keep it.  And now that someone’s gone after you, you need to be more careful.  We all do.  Do you understand, love?’

‘Yes,’ said Violet softly, sipping her water.

‘And you’ll have three days’ detention,’ added Professor Sprout.

Violet gasped in outrage.  ‘Three days?  But – but Professor –’

‘Yes, dear?’ said Professor Sprout with a wide, guileless smile.

It was impossible to argue with her.  Especially after that speech.

Professor McGonagall patted Violet on the shoulder.  ‘Rule-breaking must be dealt with, Miss Potter.’

Professor Sprout laughed as Violet pouted, but by the time they’d left, she’d gone thoughtful.  Madam Pomfrey was in her office filling out paperwork, so there was some peace and quiet.  She wasn’t anything special.  She was just Violet Potter.  She was eleven.  Who would want to come after her?

She felt a prickle of fear, and in her mind’s eye she saw a flash of green light and, for the first time, heard high, cold laughter.

Violet stared at her breakfast and rubbed her scar to try and get rid of the images in her mind.  No one had seen Voldemort for ten years.  He was probably dead.  She was the Girl Who Lived.  She’d beaten him when she was just one, and if he tried anything again, she’d beat him worse this time around.

She was not left to ponder this for long, as the doors to the hospital wing burst open and the other three Champions stampeded in.  Draco bounded up onto the bed like a puppy, almost upsetting the folding tray, while Tony tried to take her temperature.

‘What happened?’ gushed Draco.  ‘Everyone’s talking about it, the teachers have spent all morning searching the castle and questioning everyone and we’re being escorted to and from lessons and everything! Oh, and we found a recipe for itching powder –’

‘They’re saying someone attacked you!’ exclaimed Tony.  ‘Are you okay?’  Violet snapped at his fingers and he gave her a wounded look.

Hermione stood at the foot of her bed, hands on her hips, glaring like a thunderstorm.  ‘Violet Potter,’ she said shrilly, ‘you are the craziest, _stupidest_ girl I have ever met!’  Madam Pomfrey stuck her head around her office door to hush her.

Violet grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Life caught up with me.


End file.
